Getting your garden ready for sale!

“I’ve only got a couple of weeks before the real estate photographer is coming, and the garden is a terrible mess”. If this is you, my advice is “Don’t panic!” There are some simple tips and tricks you can follow to ensure prospective buyers are saying things along the lines of “Oooh, the garden looks great” as opposed to “They obviously just tried to make it look good for sale” (even though this is what you did do).

First thing to do is assess the magnitude of the situation you’ve found yourself in before devising a plan of attack. Work from the general to the particular!

Step 1:

Get rid of the weeds. If hand weeding is going to take up too much time, still hand weed any large conspicuous weeds and then spray the remaining with glyphosate. If you prefer not to use herbicides you will need to whipper snip the weeds down to ground level before applying mulch. For those using glyphosate, leave the weeds for at least a day for chemical uptake before snipping to ground level, then apply mulch. I prefer to use a natural looking mulch made from recycled wood and plant-based materials. These can be found at many quality garden centres. Try to avoid bright coloured wood chips as these scream “I’ve only done this at the last minute to sell my house”.

Step 2:

Prune back any overgrown shrubs and trees. Prune back to a branch junction rather than cutting everything in a straight line (unless it’s meant to look formal). This way the plant looks natural, and the cut is less obvious.

Step 3:

Make sure the lawn is neatly edged and mowed. I can’t tell you the number of times that I’ve slaved away in a client’s garden and only had them notice all the work I’ve done once the lawn has been cut.

Step 4:

This is where detailing comes in! Have all paths, decks, paving areas looking immaculate. If you have access to a pressure cleaner, use it. You’ll be amazed at what colour your paving is meant to be once you’re finished! This will enhance the look of not only the paving but everything around it too.

Step 5:

This is the fun part. Add plants for appeal. Annual plants are your friend here! Buy some advanced annuals, put them in attractive pots and position them is prominent positions. As you enter the house and where you enter the back yard are especially great spots. Also, if sections of your garden are a bit drab, grab some decent sized plants in flower that have broad appeal. Plants like gardenias, roses and camellias are sure fire winners. If you have some feature plants like Agaves, Grass Trees or Cycads, position them in areas where they will be seen and appreciated. If you have these types of plants in pots, make sure the pots look good and are in balance with the plant. Big plant, big pot, small plant, small pot.

Step 6

Look for trouble. Use a critical eye to see anything that can be tweaked. Does turning a pot slightly make it look better? Are the edges and paths as clean and crisp as they could be? And lastly, make sure the garden is well watered! Water the foliage of the garden and all the mulch too as this will give your garden a beautiful sheen!

I realise that sometimes people need to deal with gardens that have been neglected for years, and a garden blitz is just not going to fix things. In these circumstances I would just tidy the garden up (weeding and mulching) and add a few pots of annuals. I recently had a client who felt a garden bed was too far gone to fix up, so I suggested clearing it, covering it with a generous coat of ornamental stones and planting up three half wine barrels with simple but attractive plants and it came up a treat!