Improving Your Landscaping

Posted on: 25 May 2016

Purchasing a newly-constructed home can be an exciting time in your life, giving you the opportunity to put your own personal touches on an empty canvas. However, landscaping with a blank slate and limited budget can pose some challenges, especially for first-time homeowners who haven't had much experience in landscaping previous rental homes or apartments. When operating on a very tight budget, what can provide you the biggest landscaping bang for your buck? Read on to learn more about the best (and least expensive) landscaping choices that can quickly help your house feel like home.

Investigate your free options

Before shelling out money for plants, mulch, or potting soil, you'll want to first determine whether there are any free options in your area. In many communities, hobby gardeners and "free-gan" enthusiasts will offer up their excess plant clippings or other starters that can allow you to begin your garden without paying retail price for plants. Keep an eye out for perennials (rather than annuals) and ground cover plants like sedum or ivy that should quickly spread to cover a much larger area than originally planted. 

Your community may also offer free mulch or even potting soil at your local public works department. This mulch is often primarily composed of wood chips that are generated from trees cut down by the public works crew, but may also include compost, grass clippings, bark, and other organic matter. As long as you have a truck (or a friend's you can borrow), a shovel, and a rake, you'll be able to gather as much free mulch as you need, cutting your gardening costs significantly.

Go to a local nursery for advice

The last thing you want to do when landscaping on a budget is to sink money and effort into plants that quickly wither and die, requiring replacement or leaving a noticeable gap in your garden. While this can happen to even the greenest-thumbed gardener, choosing plants that don't tolerate your region's climate or don't thrive within your yard's specific features (for example, choosing flowers that require full sun when your yard is shaded for much of the day) will dramatically increase your odds of needing to replace these plants by summer's end. By visiting a local nursery and speaking to an employee about the plants, trees, and flowers that thrive in your region, as well as your yard's features, you'll have much better luck at choosing plants that take root and begin to grow immediately. Landscaping companies like A Greener Season Landscaping can answer more questions you may have.