Expert Advice Outdoor Features That Add Value To Your Home
Looking to add value to your home as well as enhance your lifestyle? 5 expert landscape designers share with us the most important outdoor features for making a great garden. So before you draw up extensive plans for your outdoor space, have a read of these five hot tips.
Connection
Landscape designers often stress the importance of creating a connection from the interior to your outdoor space. For Matt Lacey of Landart, it’s at the top of his list when it comes to adding value to a home.
“Creating a good natural flow and a connection with your outdoor area is one of the most important things you can do,” said Matt. “Opening up the house to an inviting and impressive outdoor entertaining area that softens the divide between outside and inside, enhances your outdoor living and overall use of the property. It can also make the inside feel grander and more visually appealing.”
“People often think it is the inside of the house that needs changing, when often, it can be what surrounds it that makes the biggest improvement.”
Soft landscape
Ben Scott of Ben Scott Garden Design believes careful consideration to the soft landscape will add value to your home.
“Planting suitably selected and located tree species will add a huge amount of value to your home in the long term. In terms of bang for your buck, this is the best value for money going around – your asset will continue to grow with time.”
Outdoor lighting
Getting your outdoor lighting right will make a huge difference to how you use your space and the overall value of your property, advised Julia Levitt from Sticks and Stones Landscape Design.
“Outdoor lighting can achieve so much, however, it’s quite often the most neglected item in a project,” said Julia. “It allows you to enjoy your garden even after dark, enticing you outside to explore and also highlights those features in your outdoor space.”
After investing so much in your garden, it would be a waste to only use it during the daylight hours.
Versatile outdoor entertaining
We love entertaining outdoors and according to Phil Antcliff of Fifth Seasons Landscape, this space will add value to your home and enhance your lifestyle.
“To me, the most important outdoor feature in a garden design is a versatile outdoor entertaining area with a seamless transition from interior to exterior”, advised Phil. “This should be an area that will allow shade in summer, sunlight in winter and protection from rain – an area for all seasons.”
Pergola structure
For Scott Leung of Eckersley Garden Architecture creating a pergola structure over your outdoor setting is the key.
“Garden pergolas provide an amazing seasonal outdoor room space. Combine a steel or timber pergola with climbers and lighting to get the desired mix of light and shade during the day as well as at night,” Scott suggested. “Use deciduous climbers in temperate climates and flowering evergreens in the tropics to achieve the perfect shaped canopy over your outdoor setting.”