Most people are familiar with all the different ways in which they can add value to a home by improving the inside of it. You can remodel your kitchen, add a bathroom, or finish off a basement to bring the value of your home way up.

But did you know that you can also increase the value of your home significantly by improving the outside of it? Beautifully landscaped houses are known to generate more interest and bring in higher offers than homes that look ugly on the exterior.

There are a bunch of home landscaping ideas that you can put to good use if you’re trying to add value to your home. By figuring out how to landscape your house in the right way, you can get the most bang for your buck during a landscaping project.

Here are nine landscaping ideas that are pretty much guaranteed to send the value of your home skyrocketing in no time at all.

1. Begin by Taking Down Any Trees That Are Dragging Down a Home’s Curb Appeal

When people pull up in front of your home, what’s the first thing that they see? If there are trees that make it impossible for them to see your house or if there are trees that are dying in your front yard, those trees are going to be your answer.

It’s nice to have one or two well-manicured trees in your front yard as part of your landscape design. But landscaped houses shouldn’t have a bunch of overgrown trees or, worse, a bunch of dead trees in front of them.

You should figure out the best time to remove trees from your property and get rid of them once and for all if they’re not adding anything to your curb appeal.

2. Bring a Dying Lawn Back to Life—and Maintain It on a Regular Basis

If you’re already taking good care of your lawn right now, great. You won’t have to worry about bringing it back to life and maintaining it on a regular basis.

But if different parts of your lawn are dying on you, you’re going to want to change that before you do almost anything else with your landscaping. People with landscaped houses don’t have lawns that are turning brown.

You should get into the habit of mowing, watering, and fertilizing your lawn each and every week. You should also do things like weed whacking and edging to keep your lawn looking its absolute best at all times.

3. Rip Out Old Flowers, Add Fresh Mulch to Flowerbeds, and Plant New Ones

When you first planted the flowers that are in the flowerbeds out front of your home, they probably looked wonderful. But now that they’ve been there for quite some time, they might not look so amazing.

It’s a good idea to rip out any old flowers that you have from your flowerbeds so that you can replace them with new ones. And while you’re at it, you should also remove the old mulch from your flowerbeds to make room for fresh mulch.

Add fresh mulch to your flowerbeds and then plant new flowers in place of the ones that were there before. If you don’t do anything else, this alone will work wonders for the look and feel of your home’s landscaping.

4. Strategically Place Bushes and Small Trees That Make Strong Statements in Your Flowerbeds

Despite their name, flowerbeds should be home to more than just flowers. They should also contain some well-positioned bushes and small trees.

You don’t want to go too wild and throw a bunch of bushes and trees that are going to grow to be too big into the ground. But you should try to find a few bushes and trees that’ll make strong statements once you add them to your flowerbeds.

Check to see how much maintenance you’re going to need to do to them before you run out and buy them. Ideally, you want to go with bushes and trees that aren’t going to call for you to do much at all to them.

5. Surround Flowerbeds and Other Landscaping Features With Retaining Walls

Do you have retaining walls that run around the outside of your home’s flowerbeds? If you don’t, you’re going to want to design and install some to enhance the overall appearance of these flowerbeds.

You can choose to build retaining walls that only rise up a foot or so off the ground or go with retaining walls that double as seating since they’re so tall. Regardless of which approach you choose to take, you can rest assured knowing your flowerbeds will look better than they did before when you’re all finished setting your walls up.

6. Consider Adding a Fountain (or Two!) to the Mix

When people are standing outside of your home looking around at everything you’ve done with your landscaping, you want them to feel like they’re at peace. Adding a fountain—or maybe even multiple fountains—will help them achieve this feeling.

Studies have shown that listening to water sounds can reduce people’s stress levels. You can inject plenty of these sounds into your front yard when you have a fountain running throughout the day and night.

7. Use Outdoor Lighting to Put Your Landscaping Into the Best Light at All Times

All landscaped houses look great during the day. But not all of them continue to look great once the sun goes down.

If you don’t have any outdoor lighting installed on the exterior of your home, people aren’t going to be able to see your landscaping at night. It’s why you should make it a point to install at least some lighting outside your home.

You don’t have to go too overboard with it and shine a spotlight on every single landscaping feature. But you should try to put a few of your favorite features into the right light through the use of outdoor lighting.

Outdoor lighting will make your home look just as good at night as it does during the day. People will “ooh” and “aah” as they drive by your home at night when you have the right lighting features in place.

8. Install a Sprinkler System to Prevent Grass, Flowers, Plants, and Trees From Drying Out

You can spend the next ten Saturdays and Sundays using all these landscaping tips to improve the outside of your home and to beef up the value of your property. But what good is it going to do if almost everything you plant is dead in six months?

It’s not going to do you any good at all, which is why it’s so important for you to keep everything watered. Most of the grass, plants, and trees on your property are going to need at least a little bit of water to stay healthy.

You could try and water everything by hand if you don’t have a huge property to take care of. But more often than not, it’ll be so much easier to install a sprinkler system that is designed to water it all for you.

A sprinkler system will add a lot of value to your home since homebuyers will see it as a huge asset. They’ll appreciate knowing that they won’t have to worry about maintaining all the landscaping that you’ve done.

9. Finish Your New Landscape Design Off With a Few Decorative Touches

At this point, you’ll be just about ready to show off your home’s new landscape design to the world! The only thing left to do will be to add a few decorative touches to it to make it unique to you.

How can you go about doing this? You can do things like:

• Put up flags that celebrate holidays or that have your family’s name on them

• Hang up birdhouses to attract birds to come and hang out in your trees

• Place personalized garden stones in some of the empty spaces within your flowerbeds

• Find places to put benches, chairs, and other forms of seating so that people can enjoy your landscaping

As long as you’ve done all the other things we’ve talked about here, your landscaping will already look great. These decorative touches will serve to put your landscape design over the top and make your home look more warm and welcoming than it did before.

Homebuyers Love the Look of Landscaped Houses

If your home isn’t landscaped, the inside of it is going to need to be incredible for people to overlook the outside of it. Your home is going to lack the necessary curb appeal.

You can improve curb appeal and bring the value of your home way up in the process by doing at least some of the things discussed here. It won’t take you long to see why homebuyers love landscaped houses so much once you see what a difference landscaping makes with your home.

Interested in seeing some more ways in which you can improve your home and add value to it? Browse through some of the top home improvement tips and tricks in the other articles on our website.