Photo by Curtis Adams

5 Ways To Spruce Up Your Yard

The outdoor spaces that surround a home can say a lot about the people who live inside. Untidy front yards and broken paving can make people think inside the home is the same; untidy and in disrepair.

Sprucing up your yards takes a little bit of hard work, but it has a significant impact on the look of your home. Here are five ways to give your front and back yards a makeover.

Fix Your Parking and Paving

How your home looks from the street is how it says ‘Hello’. Your front yard is a greeting to passers-by, neighbors, and visiting friends and family. What does your home’s hello look like?

The pathways and drives around the house stand out from the rest of the house. It is hard to make concrete or asphalt look interesting or welcoming. Worse still is a driveway or path that is damaged, cracked, or pot-holed, this stands out even more.

When concrete floor repair is done well it can breathe new life into your outdoor space. Fresh concrete shines on a sunny day, and a professionally finished surface gives your home a bright smile to greet its visitors. Look here to get your concrete floor fixed by an experienced team that can repair and resurface your pathways and drives and gives them with a picture-perfect finish.

Image from House Beautiful

Plant Flowers to Add Color

Home sidings and concrete driveways can be a little too bland and beige. You can bring life and color to your front yard with some blooming flowers.

Chrysanthemums, pansies, and violas are all good choices, and they are inexpensive and available in the garden section of most home improvement stores. Some grocery stores will have them too when winter turns to spring and people begin planting.

Plan before you plant to get the best look. Think about the colors you want to use and how you want to use them. Bordering pathways with pansies is a nice look and there are many different colors to choose from. When choosing colors, try to accent an existing color in the yard. If your home has light blue siding, for example, purple pansies will give a deeper color that contrasts nicely with the light-colored siding.

Spend a Weekend Landscaping

You might be surprised at how large an impact some yard work can have. It is easy to keep putting off the gardening duties and soon grass is overgrown, and the space looks untidy. Windswept, not rake swept.

Plan a weekend of yard duties. It is a chore, but it can be fun too. You do not have to go out and spend money on planters and flowers. Put in a couple of hours of work organizing, tidying, mowing, and weeding, and your front and back yards will look like new.

Turning over the soil makes a garden look fresh and trim the edges of your lawn after mowing. Do every little thing you can do to smarten up the garden you already have. This can give you a lot of inspiration for improvements you can make later, like planters and flowers, before you go out and spend the money.

Image from NHCT

Build a Farm in Your Yard

Growing your own food is an amazing experience. Everyone should grow a little of their own produce, it makes good sense and saves money. You do not need a lot of space either.

Designate an area of your backyard for farming. Raised planters with deep soil beds are perfect for growing root vegetables like potatoes, carrots, and beets. These can be grown for most of the year and do not need much attention. This can help you save some money on groceries all year round.

If your yard space is limited, don’t worry. Something as small as a herb garden on your kitchen windowsill still counts as growing your own food. Vegetables like green beans can be grown along a fence. Think about replacing a flower bed with a row of green beans or even squashes.

Good Fences Make You a Good Neighbor

Broken, mismatched, or discolored fencing is an ugly sight. You could spend a lot of time and money revamping your yard, but if it is surrounded by poor quality fences it will still look bad and let you down.

Fixing up your fencing is necessary. You may be able to do a lot yourself and repair some of the damage, but if things are bad you might need to spend a little to get the look you want.

If your fences are in fairly good condition, consider repainting them. You can make a dull garden a brighter place to be by using light pastel shades of weather-proof paint instead of browns, black or white. Artistic gardeners might be able to paint a mural or scene across fencing, creating some art in your outdoor space.

Do one or two of these simple improvements and you will see the difference. Give your home and your family the outdoor spaces they deserve.

Gail P
I am a beachy type of person, living in Newport Beach, and oftentimes I’ll go for a swim with my daughter. When I’m bored, I’ll help make package boxes for my little girl’s sticker company on Etsy.