A nicely landscaped garden can go a long way towards making a person want to buy or rent a property. This is why landscaping skills are so important to property developers. If you don’t know anything about landscaping, there’s no need to worry as we’ve got a nice overview here which should help you to master it.
Where to Start
You look at the empty garden outside of the property and you think to yourself “How do I even begin to making any landscaping plans?” Well, the best thing to do is start by asking yourself what garden features you think might look nice. Make list. Ideas might include:
- Flower beds
- A pond
- A swing set
- A play area for children
- A tree (or two)
- A path (or other paving stones)
- A fountain
There are lots of possibilities and it’s worth mindmapping these ideas to see how many you can come up with. Once you’ve written them all down, it’s time to reflect on what is appropriate for your property. Which leads us nicely onto the next point…
Know Your Market
Who do you envision buying or renting your property? The answer to that question should have a significant impact upon how you decide to landscape its garden. Think about what different groups of people might be looking for:
- Students: Students are less likely to be interested in a fancy garden. Open space and a picnic table might be good for them, as they may enjoy inviting friends over during the warmer months.
- Married Couples: Married couples may have children or may be planning on having them soon. Something which is child friendly and very homely may appeal to them. Think swing sets and sand pits.
- Elderly People: They’re not going to want something which requires a lot of maintenance, but they will appreciate a nice garden. Somewhere they can sit in peaceful tranquility.
You’ll know your area well, so you can use your local knowledge to determine what potential tenants might be interested in. This should go some way towards helping you decide what you want to do with the property’s garden. Just remember that you need to know how to market the property.
Think About Practicality
You musn’t launch into a landscaping project without having fully thought it through. If you fail to consider every aspect of the project, you may find yourself getting to a point where you have to leave things unfinished because you realise that you hadn’t fully thought things through.
However, while there are times where it might seem like certain ideas are impossible, solutions may still be available. For example, if you’ve got a garden which is completely paved over and you want to go for something a little more natural, you may think that it would be impossible for you to do within a limited time frame. Thankfully, you would be wrong. In situations like these, fake grass is ideal.
In fact, that’s just one of many situations in which fake grass will come in very handy. It could be a nice and safe surface to use with a children’s play area or even in very urban, office-type places. Other alternatives include macadam surfacing (which lets you have colourful graphics), polymeric surfacing (for sports surfaces), resin bonded paving (for durable surfaces with the appearance of loose gravel) or rhino pave specification (for especially dense overgrowth.) These different surfaces can make quite a lot of ideas practical and are worth keeping in mind.
Choose Something to Focus On
A good landscapist knows that a garden needs to have a nice, focal attraction point. This is what will hold the whole garden together and what will stop it from looking disjointed. You could have a swing, a pond and a picnic table scattered around a garden – without a focal point it will just look like random things dumped in a garden. Choose something good which will appeal to the type of people you’re selling to and keep that at the centre of the garden.
Getting to grips with landscaping can be really useful for any property developer. People like a good house, sure, but a good house with a lousey garden may not be quite so attractive. If you’ve got a property with an empty garden, then this could be the perfect opportunity for some experimentation with landscaping. It might just turn out to be a very worthwhile investment. What plans do you have for your properties?
