The foundation walls of modern homes are designed by an engineer based on the soils report on the site the home is being built upon.
Tom Kalinski, RE/MAX of Boulder
Summer home-buying months may be coming to a close, but people buy homes in the fall and curb appeal plays an important role.
Home landscaping often begins to fade as the state’s unseasonably wet and cooler summer trend that’s marked this year gives way to hotter, dryer weather. With simple updating, your home’s curb appeal can flourish throughout the fall. Here are some quick and easy tips for bringing your landscape into fall glory, first published by GinghamGardens.com,
GoWestGardener.com and the Colorado State University (CSU) Extension Service.
Add lots of fall-blooming flowers
If your summer perennials have spent their blooms and the annuals are fading, adding some new blooming plants is the fastest fix. Mums play double duty, bringing blooming plants to your yard and containers like an annual. If planted in the ground, mums will survive the winter and reappear the next year just as a perennial does.
Marigolds also do well in the fall and come in colors that coordinate with changing leaf colors, such as yellow and orange. Ornamental grasses look great in the fall season, too.
Certain summer annuals will perk up again when the weather turns cooler, bringing loads of color back to freshen your home’s curb appeal. Keep watering and deadheading your snapdragons, sweet alyssum and black-eyed Susans to brighten your fall bounty.
If you’re planting perennials this fall with an eye toward next year’s curb appeal, remember to include varieties that look great in fall, like moonshine yarrow, asters, blue mist spirea, sedum and ornamental grasses. Grasses and yarrow bring the added value of providing a fantastic winterscape to your yard, even after cold weather sets in and the blooms and colors fade. They take on a lovely, textural wheat color to provide contrast and interest to winter views.
Refresh your mulch
Adding a fresh layer of mulch is one of the best methods to brighten your landscaping. Adding fresh mulch is a low-cost, fast and easy way to sharpen the definition of your plant beds and tree bases, and it helps to keep the soil moist longer and deters weed growth.
Trim spent perennials, annuals and other plants
Many Colorado pollinators overwinter in perennials — such as the nested eggs of native bee species that complete their growth when the water starts to warm again, advises the CSU Pueblo Extension Service. Bees rely on leaf piles and hollowed-out stems for winter refuge. Butterfly and moth larvae and ladybugs also overwinter in leaf piles, so you want to leave some perennials for the pollinators. One approach is to treat your front yard and back yard differently, making your front yard look neater by cutting back spent perennials while letting them stand in the back to give pollinators a place to go. Continue your tidying by cutting down browned foliage to near ground level and covering the stubs with mulch.
Clean your home’s exterior
Begin by cleaning the leaves and debris from the beds around your house. Then, use a power washer to clean the siding, porch, bricks, sidewalks and driveways to make everything look fresh and dazzling.
Shift your decorations to fall
As fall moves into full swing, change the wreath on your front door to one with fall flowers and add pumpkins to your front porch.
Adding these fall flavors to your home’s landscaping will give it that welcoming fall feeling and bring shine to its curb appeal, which helps attract buyers to your home.
Read the full story at ginghamgardens.com/fall-landscaping-tips and gowestgardener.com/blog/best-flowers-late-summer and
csuhort.blogspot.com/2020/11/winter-time-considerations-for.html.
By Tom Kalinski. Tom is the broker/owner of RE/MAX of Boulder. He has a 40-year background in commercial and residential real estate. For questions, email Tom at [email protected], call 303.441.5620 or visit boulderco.com.
