Curb Appeal Killer: Mulch Ado About Nothing

I know that not everyone is into hauling boulders, and planting herb gardens, and — well — really landscaping. Some people are into lawns, and a nice lawn makes a house look good. Others think that four Home Depot yews and a bag of hosta chunks are okay. They aren’t.

But the very worst is orange mulch. Nothing says “I’ll get to live in a place that looks like the parking lot of WalMart” like spreading orange mulch everywhere.

Real cedar mulch isn’t great — it robs the soil of nitrogen as it decomposes — but at least it looks natural, and if you want to keep weeds down, it’s okay. But you see this other stuff everywhere, in giant orange mounds that dwarf nursery fences. God knows what it really is — but it’s been dyed red, and it might well be made of plastic and shredded tires. It’s toxic, and if you don’t care about that, it’s ugly. And ugly doesn’t sell your house.

You don’t have to be a gardening enthusiast to add curb appeal to your home, but you should try to make it look like a pleasant place to be from the outside. Condo association take note: lousy landscapes make your building look like a housing project as prospective buyers approach. Institutional is bad when people are looking for a home.

Here are 10 things you can do to dress up a house:

1. Redraw the lines of beds — instead of rectangles, make blobs and curves. Round it out.
2. Plant FLOWERS. Try to find perennials that will establish themselves and fill in the bed over time.
3. Ask questions at the nursery — find out what’s easy to grow and what will grow in the light and soil conditions in your yard. Things don’t die because they hate you, they die because their conditions are wrong.
4. Fill in bald spots and weedy areas with native wildflower seeds. Just seed the heck out of an eyesore and watch it turn into an attractive feature. Wildflowers are grasses — they’ll take over where many other things won’t grow.
5. Don’t mess with lawn ornaments — forget the little dutch boy and girl, or the much more politically incorrect stuff one sees in people’s lawns. Water features are nice, but cement and plastic fountains are a waste of money. Likewise the cheap gazebos and stuff they sell at Target.
6. Real estate agents may warn you against using stone inside your home, but natural rock is always impressive outside a house. Cinder block is ugly. Brick is okay, but those you-stack-’em retaining wall blocks are cinder block, and that’s what they look like. Dry-lay stone retaining walls — the kind that don’t use cement — are almost as easy to build, and they look much better.
7. Prune and trim. Cut back the weeds in that ditch. Get rid of the old Volvo that has become its own superfund cleanup site in the side yard.
8. Don’t show a house with a tree than needs tree work. It’s expensive, but not as expensive as buyers will perceive it to be. If it’s close to the house, and it’s big, you need to make it look tended and healthy, or cut it down.
9. Use natural bark mulch, or partially decomposed wood chips. Buckwheat hulls and muscle shells make pretty, organic mulch, too. Good, dark mulch holds moisture, controls weeds, and provides contrast to your colorful plants.
10. Deal with drainage issues before you try to sell your house. Regrade the lawn (it’s easier than it sounds), dig a French drain (un hole filled avec les gravel), or re-route the gutters so they spill out farther away from the house. Don’t blow the deal when potential buyers come to see the place in the rain!

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