Affordable Landscaping – How to Set a Budget

If you have a large section or even an average section, Landscaping is very important to get right for many reasons. The first is your pride and enjoyment in your property. Secondly, will be possibly for your privacy, if you have bought a property that is in clear visibility to your neighbors, or the street, and, thirdly, to achieve the maximum sales price affordable landscaping when you come to sell what is more than likely to be your largest asset.

Affordable Landscaping

So, your landscaping is definitely going to require very extensive and careful planning to get the most out of it. It shouldn’t be undertaken too quickly. Landscaping is a little like writing a book. You might have an initial idea and think its great, but after jotting it down and thinking more about the plot and the characters, you’ll quickly run up against a brick wall, so to speak, as you release that the plot wont work for such and such a reason and it will need modification.

Irrigation Problems

o it is the same with affordable landscaping. Have a main idea, write it down, roughly draw it up and then think about it over the next few days or weeks before taking any more action. I bet that after two weeks your initial idea will have radically changed, on paper. The changes you make will be to seeing something else in the meantime that you prefer, or, it wont work because of light or irrigation problems, or, it was simply going to be too expensive. So, not taking action for a few weeks can save you a considerable amount of expense.

So, best to start with an affordable budget to set yourself. This should be your maximum that you can afford. From here you can start going backwards to save yourself money on your project.

Another consideration though while setting your budget is that you could undertake your affordable landscapingproject in stages, but, this would only be a good idea if you see yourself getting extra money to afford this in the future, otherwise you could end up with a very expensive stage all finished and then the next stage a budget finish that is simply not going to look right, so, probably best just to budget it at the start and perhaps have room for improvements in the future if extra money does become available.

Irrigation Systems

An interesting rule of thumb for landscaping on an average section is that it should be around 10% of the value of your home if you are starting afresh and plan to do everything. This includes, decks, pergola’s, fences, irrigation systems and lighting. It sounds like a lot, maybe too much, but if your home is worth say $600,000 then $60,000 for landscaping if it’s carefully planned will go a long way. A warning here though.

f your home is worth $600,000 or $400,000, or whatever its worth and you propose selling it soon and your home is the average price on your street, then don’t spend 10% extra on it – you’ll just over capitalize on it. The 10% budget is only if you intend to live in your home for say five years plus before selling and stay to enjoy your new surroundings. However, if you are landscaping so to sell your home, careful planning at a much lesser budget will definitely improve things and at least make your home sell faster.…