Make your home stand out with these 5 plants for instant curb appeal. Enhance your landscaping and attract potential buyers for a faster sale.
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ooking to sell your home soon? Good curb appeal creates a strong first impression for buyers, setting a promising tone for the rest of their home tour. Upgrading your landscaping with new plants for the front of the house and flowers is a cost-effective way to improve the looks of your property and can easily be done in a weekend. Read on for our favorite varieties and how to incorporate them into your landscaping or hardscaping.
Boxwoods
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When you’re ramping up your curb appeal, start with evergreens that give structure to your yard. Boxwoods make great foundation plants and come in many sizes, so you can also add them to beds and borders.
Mix in annuals and other plants with year-round interest, says Julie Arnold Camp, a realtor with Better Homes and Gardens Metro Brokers in Atlanta. “Annuals give color during the length of the listing. Using pots is also a good idea to add seasonal color, or to add color to an area that has no interesting character.”
Tip: flats of annuals are usually cheaper than individual plants.
LEARN MORE: 26 Annual Flowers for Year-Round Color
Roses
Rob Cardillo/Knock Out Roses
Roses aren’t attractive in the winter, and even when they’re blooming, they often need pruning, fertilizing and spraying. But some roses, like the Knock Out family, are low-maintenance, which many homebuyers know and appreciate, and they produce spectacular flowers from spring until frost.
Tip: Smaller Drift roses, which mature around 18 inches tall, are also easy to grow and make a pretty groundcover for sunny spots.
LEARN MORE: Growing Double Knock Out Roses
Hydrangeas
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Hydrangeas give you a lot of bang for your curb-appeal buck. They’re easy to grow, need little care and put on a spectacular show when they bloom. Most of these flowering shrubs prefer morning sun with afternoon shade and are hardy in Zones 4 or 5-9. ‘Invincibelle Mini Mauvette,’ shown here, is hardy in Zones 3-9 and takes full sun.
Tip: If you use lush, leafy hydrangeas to camouflage an unsightly foundation, leave a couple of feet between the plants and the house so they have room to spread.
LEARN MORE: How to Grow Hydrangeas
Front Door Urns
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For fast curb appeal, post urns on each side of your front door, and plant them with feathery-textured Pinpoint Blue false cypress. These evergreen shrubs grow into tall, narrow columns, so they won’t block your entrance. Here, they’re underplanted with ‘Spot On’ lungwort (Pulmonaria); the pink buds will open into blue flowers. The urns also hold yellow pansies, creeping phlox, calibrachoas Superbells Honeyberry and Shadowland ‘Autumn Frost’ hostas.
Tip: Urns are also ideal for growing topiary plants.
FIND MORE IDEAS: 20 Ways to Use Large Garden Containers
Hostas
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Bare spots under your trees don’t make a good impression when you want top dollar for your home. Tuck shade-loving hostas into those areas or use them around shrubs and in borders. Their flowers aren’t showy, but their leaves, which come in shades of green, gray, blue, cream, and yellow-gold, are standouts. Choose small, medium or large varieties; most are hardy in Zones 3-9.
Tip: Add containers of shade-loving begonias and impatiens for pops of color. Shown here: Shadowland ‘Autumn Frost’ and Shadowland ‘Coast to Coast.’
LEARN MORE: How to Grow Hostas
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