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Landscaping adds value to your home and gives you extra living space

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I’ve noticed lately that the value of homes in our area has been going up and up. We’ve only lived in our house for six years and already and going by the price similar homes in our area have sold for, our house has gone up in price by more than $250,000 making homes in our area $450K +.

Don’t be fooled. There’s nothing particularly special about the homes in our area. It’s a nice neighborhood, but it’s not a gated community or anything. Housing prices have just been going up.

The odd thing is, I find many of the homes rather plain Jane. For all I know they’ve been gutted and completely renovated inside, but from the outside they don’t look like anything special.

That’s where we are different. We are renovating the inside of our home, but we began our indoor renovations at the same time as our outdoor landscaping. Luckily we finished the outdoor landscaping the same year we started. The indoor renovations are ongoing much to my dismay.

We have no plans to sell our home, but I’ve always figured that all the work we’ve done landscaping our yard and caring for our lovely garden has added value to our home.

My suspicions were confirmed when I read an article on Plant-Care.com that states that a study cited in Smart Money magazine states that consumers value a landscaped home up to 11.3% higher than it’s base price. I’m pleased with that report since our home is the only one on the whole block that really has any landscaping. We’ve added value to our home. It’s confirmed!

The article that I found that information in was one that discussed a number of unique backyard landscape ideas. If you’ve considered landscaping your front and or backyard and would like some great ideas you should go read the article. There are links within the article that lead to other articles with more in depth information about each particular type of landscaping discussed within the main article.

We don’t have a pool and we never will because our backyard is just too small to have a pool, but if you’ve thought of putting a pool in your yard or perhaps have one, but haven’t done much else to the yard you should read the section on pool and landscaping around the pool area. Certainly if you’ve watched any of the programs on TLC you know that you can landscape a pool area in many different styles and your yard could go from a recreation area to a true living area with a little landscaping.

As many of you know our landscaped backyard includes raised garden beds along the perimeter of the yard and a lovely patio for entertaining. There are some great deck and patio landscaping ideas discussed in the above mentioned article. If you’ve thought of putting in a patio or deck, but you aren’t sure where to start or what materials to use you’ll get some great starter suggestions by reading the articles linked to the landscaping write up.

Some simple, and economical ways to landscape your yard, whether you already have a fully landscaped backyard or just a flowerbed or two is to add some garden lighting. Outdoor lighting, electric or solar, can be used to light a garden path or highlight plants or other features with a garden or backyard. We use solar outdoor lighting and it makes our yard look quite lovely at night. It also makes it pleasant to sit outdoors in the evening in the dimly lit garden.

We used interlocking easy stone to create our raised garden beds, but we could have used layered rocks, or we could have brought in some larger rocks and made landscape features out of them. The above mentioned article discusses the use of rocks in the landscape and how to create a natural look using rocks.

One thing that my husband in particular wants to add to our garden is landscape speakers. There are some speakers that are made to look like rocks that you can place within your garden and hook up to your indoor stereo system which would allow you to have music in your yard yet maintain a natural look and feel. I’m pretty sure that, that is one of the ideas that we’ll use ourselves that’s mentioned in the landscaping article.

I’ve actually visited the Plant-care.com website several times in the past when I’ve been looking up plant care information. I know I visited this site when I was looking up information on Aglaonemas – Chinese evergreens a couple of years ago. They had several articles about these easy to care for plants so they kept coming up in my Google searches. I actually think that’s how I discovered the site in the first place.

To close this long post I’d just like to get back to my original idea. if you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time you know I get quite a bit of pleasure out of my landscaped backyard. I love it and visitors adore it. If you haven’t yet landscaped I would strongly encourage you to do so. You’ll get extra living space that I’m certain you’ll enjoy and it appears you’ll also increase the value of your home.

Take a look at the landscaping article. I’m sure you’ll get some great ideas for your own backyard landscaping.






Get outside and get active!

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When I was growing up I remember being outdoors all the time. Playing with other kids from the neighborhood – hide and seek, jumpsie, skateboarding and rollerblading. There was non of this staying inside to play video games! Heck if I’d wanted to stay indoors to watch TV my parents would have though something was wrong with me, and if there’s wasn’t there’s no way I’d be allowed to just sit around and watch TV anyway.

Now as an adult I’d love to get back into that active outdoors lifestyle again. Living in a city such as Toronto sure does make it easy to get outside and do things!

I’ve been looking around for something to motivate me to get outside more and when I saw the heelys at Fritz’s Skate and Surf I thought “Well now this looks interesting!”. As I could certainly use a pair of heelys to whip around the neighborhood.

I’d go further than if I were just walking and I’d certainly get a bit of a workout as a result.

I actually like the wide selection of Healys and rollerblades at Fritz’s Skate and Surf. It’s a popular action sports shop in Miami. They have a wide selection of sporting goods from surfing gear to inline skates and all the accessories you can think of. They ship to both US, US military addresses, and Canada.

I think I’ll take a look through their selection of heelys and rollerblades to see if I can find any styles that I really like.

Did you rollerblade or skateboard as a child?

My neighbor has become a pest

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I think my elderly neighbor Sofie is getting worse in her stalking ways.

I honestly wouldn’t be surprised to find a camera in my home that she’s placed there to watch me.

I mean, she knows every time I step outside my door – whether I go out the front of the back she’s there, seemingly waiting for me!

Honestly! She’s part of the reason why I’m not getting my garden work done.

All of our backyards are fairly open with short chain link fences between them. I don’t mind this so much and I don’t mind my neighbors being outdoors using their yards at the same time I am … but Sofie … Sofie literally follows me around. I’ll be in one portion of my backyard trying to work at something and she’ll be opposite me on her side of the fence digging in the earth or spraying her plants with water. I move, she moves.

When she finally does tire she’s sit on her steps and watch me work. If she only watched me work in my garden I wouldn’t be too upset … but no, she has to ask questions. Usually it’s the same ones over and over.

Trouble is I can’t usually hear her since the traffic at the front of the house is so loud and she’s talking low. She knows I can’t hear her too. So I’ll spend some time nodding my head but eventually she’ll say something repeatedly wanting me to truly respond and I’ll have to get up from what I’m doing, go over to her to find out what she’s saying “No rain???” and then go back to my work. She does this repeatedly.

Manipulative of her, isn’t it? She knows what she’s doing and I’m certain she knows she’s frustrating me.

Last night Chris went outside at 8 pm to grill some sausages. I could hear him talking to her while he cooked. At about 8:20 he came inside to tell me that Sofie had just brought out some hamburgers and a pepper for him to cook on the grill. Yes our dinner was done. She knew Chris was cooking yet she waiting until he was finished before asking him to cook her food. Grrrr

Almost every elderly person I know eats their dinner somewhere between 4 pm and 6 pm … what the heck did she want with a couple of hamburgers at 8:30 at night? There’s no way she ate them last night.

If you ever wonder why I talk about being outside at 10 pm planting plants, pruning and watering this is why. I hide until she’s closed up her doors and gone in and then I sneak out so I can do my gardening in peace – with the stray cats that wander through my yard and the raccoons.

Of course if I hide from her too long she literally peaks in my windows! Arghhh!

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