FAQ: How can I enhance my home’s curb appeal as a homeowner?

Answer: You can improve your home’s curb appeal by ensuring your lawn and landscape are healthy and vibrant. Also, landscaping elements like outdoor lighting and irrigation systems enhance your property’s curb appeal.

In this blog post, you’ll learn six easy ways to elevate your home’s curb appeal when you:

• Achieve curb appeal with a lush green lawn
• Incorporate hardscaping elements to welcome your friends and family
• Color your front yard with annuals, perennials, shrubs, and trees.

Achieve Curb Appeal with A Lush Green Lawn

A healthy, green lawn will make people look closer at your home’s front yard because of its vibrancy and lack of weeds taking over it.

If you want a lush green lawn that makes your curb appeal shine, here are six secrets for a healthy lawn:

1. Test your soil: You won’t be able to accurately add nutrients to your soil until you know what’s missing. You can obtain a soil test through your local extension service. You’ll need to collect approximately two cups of soil from different parts of your lawn.
2. Fertilize your lawn with the proper nutrients at the right time: After you receive your test results, you’ll see if you must correct the soil’s pH and the nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorous (NPK) ratio your lawn needs for optimal health. Follow the instructions on the back of the fertilizer bag.
3. Control weeds: Too many weeds choke out healthy turf. In the early spring, you’ll need to apply pre-emergent weed control. In mid-to-late spring, you’ll need to put down broadleaf weed control. 
4. Properly mow your lawn: Only cut your grass with sharp blades to protect the turf from jagged cuts that open the door to diseases and insects. Mow in mid-morning or early evening to prevent heat stress on your lawn. Consider recycling grass clippings for a nitrogen boost, using the mulching mechanism on your lawn mower.
5. Aerate and overseed your lawn: You can hire a lawn care company to aerate your lawn or rent a core aerator at your local hardware store. Aeration takes plugs of soil from the ground so oxygen and moisture can work their way into the ground. Use a core aerator to pull these soil plugs. Also you want to overseed soon after aeration for excellent seed-to-soil contact. Aerate cool season grasses in the fall and warm season grasses in the spring.
6. Wisely water your lawn: Do you know that your lawn only needs between 1” to 1½” of water per week, which includes any rain that falls during the week? An automatic water sprinkler with a rain/freeze sensor will turn off the rotors and spray heads when it rains.

Deep, infrequent irrigation encourages turfgrass roots to go deep into the soil. Couple that with watering between 5 a.m. and 9 a.m., and you’ll have healthy, thick turfgrass.

Incorporate Hardscaping Elements to Welcome Your Friends and Family

Your front yard from the curb to the front door should wow people driving past your home as well as welcome friends and family to your front door.

Depending on how the front of your house is set up, you can add the following hardscapes:

• Paver or natural stone walkways connecting the driveway and the curb to your front door or backyard.
• Brick and concrete paver driveways enhance your driveway’s elegance and add a “wow” factor to boost curb appeal.
• Add arbors at the beginning of a walkway leading from the curb to your front porch or at the entrance that goes to the backyard.
• Pergolas add a touch of class to front porches without covers.
• Outdoor lighting can highlight the front façade of your home, add a sense of security, and allow you to enjoy nighttime parties.

Add hardscaping elements to raise the bar with your curb appeal. Your property values increase when you enhance the front part of your home.

Color Your Front Yard with Annuals, Perennials, Shrubs, and Trees

Plants give your front yard a focal point and soften your home’s hard lines. There are landscaping layers to consider when transforming your curb appeal from blah to brilliant.


You want your front yard to encapsulate a four-season color by layering. Here’s a breakdown of layered landscaping for curb appeal:

• Start with foundational plants like shade trees, evergreens, and ornamental trees. These specimens, planted around your home’s foundation, make your home’s best features pop. They soften your home’s lines and invite visitors to your front door.
• Elegant plant containers frame your front door; you can change the plants and pots throughout the seasons.
• Trees are natural focal points, providing environmental benefits, such as cooling your house in the summer. A single tree raises your home’s value by approximately 2%.
• Colorful foliage and flowers brighten your front beds and line the walkway leading to your home. Mix in perennials, ornamental grasses, dwarf shrubs, and other plantings that complement your home’s exterior.
• Plant native perennials and dwarf shrubs that invite birds, beneficial insects, and other wildlife into your front yard.
• If you’re a busy power couple, a bustling family, or a brown thumb, consider low-maintenance plants to reduce your need to trim and deadhead blooms.

Invest in Your Curb Appeal with K-Rain’s Dripline Kit, Tree Bubblers, and Sprinklers

Keep your lawn healthy and your landscapes blooming by investing in K-Rain’s Irrigation Products. Our drip irrigation delivers water right to the roots of your bedding and container plants.

Our tree bubblers provide the right amount of water to your shrubs and trees at the right time.

Our easy-to-install K-Rain sprinkler systems come with rotors, sprays, controllers, and many other sprinkler parts to conserve water while keeping your lawn looking its best.

Shop for K-Rain sprinklers online or buy your K-Rain products at The Home Depot and Lowe's.

Find a skilled irrigation contractor on our website for easy installation services.

Need help with K-Rain products? Contact our customer service team at 800-735-7246 or through our contact form.

Sources:
Pennington.com, How to Improve Lawn and Landscape to Enhance Home Curb Appeal.
PrettyPurpleDoor.com, Landscape Layering: How to Create an Amazing Landscape.
TheSpruce.com, 6 Different Types of Driveway Materials.