As Spring approaches, you may be thinking about freshening up your landscaping. The right landscaping can drastically improve, beautify, and liven up your home by adding vibrant color, leafy textures, and heaps of curb appeal.

If you’re starting from scratch with your landscaping, first collect inspiration and really figure out how you’d like your yard to look. Then, when you have a good idea for the types of flowers, shrubs, and trees as well as their respective placement within your yard, stop by your local nursery or hire a landscaping professional to do the job for you.

If you’re thinking about tackling this project on your own, be sure to carefully select your plants based on color, maintenance, lighting (shade, partial, or full sun), as well as the maximum growth habits of each plant. Check each plant tag carefully just to make sure your plants will continue to stay within the confines of your landscaping plans. If you need help deciding which plants to grab, don’t be afraid to seek the advice of the experts at your local nursery.

[foogallery id=”2066″]

Home Maintenance, Security, and Critter Tips

• Make sure that your siding is at least 6″ from the ground to help prevent moisture damage.
• Plan on leaving walking space (of roughly 2′) between your siding and your landscaping. This will help to prevent moisture from building up, keep foliage further away from your home, and will keep bugs and insects at bay, which will ultimately protect your home and your siding from damage.
• Try to keep large bushes, trees, and hedges to a minimum size for better security and visibility.
• Think about adding landscape lighting to keep walking paths safely lit while enhancing the ambiance and design of your home.
• If you have trees close to your home, trim branches back from your roofing to help keep squirrels and other animals out of reach.

Spring Garden To-do List

• Clean up around plants
• Start a compost pile
• Neaten up hardscape surfaces
• Fix uneven steppingstones
• Repair dry stacked-stone walls or retaining walls
• Touch up mulch
• Patch, replace, and paint worn wood fencing
• Clean birdhouses
• Correct tunnels made by garden pests
• Clean gutters to prevent water from drowning plants below
• Scrub clay pots
• Clean tools
• Remove leaves from the bottom of ponds or other water features