New Landscape Makes a Yard Feel New Again

In your first year in your new home, you'll have enough to worry about without making major changes to the landscaping. These tips will help you maintain a trim, neat lawn without making dramatic lawn alterations or planting specimens that require a lot of time consuming upkeep.

Plan on Making Few Changes

Unless the previous owners of your home let the yard go to the dogs, plan to make only a few changes in the first year while you're settling in. Putting the time and effort into a new landscape scheme may burn you out before the growing season even gets started, and even if it doesn't, you could still end up neglecting your garden at crucial moments.

What changes you do plan to make should be small and simple. For example:

Plant common annuals. If you want to add flowers to your garden, common annuals like impatiens, petunias, marigolds and geraniums tend to be easy to manage. These plants have few needs besides regular watering, so they'll take away little time you need to unpack, paint and make other changes around the house. Best of all, they represent no commitment whatsoever because they'll be gone by the end of the growing season—so you can decide to plant something else next year, when you have more time.

Trim back or remove what you don't like. You may not know what you want to plant or have time to plant much, but you can still get rid of any old, leggy shrubs and untended plants leftover from the previous owner. If you do remove one or two plants from the area around your house, plant annuals in their place to cover up the hole.

No In-Ground Sprinkler? Go for Drought-Resistant Specimens

You might have the drive and motivation to take care of your lawn this growing season, but there's a good chance you'll get caught up in making changes around your new house. Over time, you could forget (or want to forget) about taking care of your lawn. If you don't have an in-ground automatic sprinkler system, make sure the specimens you plant are drought-resistant. Gazanias, for example, are beautiful daisy-like flowers that bloom best in poor soil with little water. Planting gazanias will allow you to skip some waterings without incurring damage.

Get Help from an Experienced Landscaping Company

If you do want to make major changes to your yard this year, now is the time to hire landscapers. Hiring landscapers, like those at Affordable Cuts, will enable you to make the changes you want to make t your lawn without distracting you from other important household tasks.