by Mark Foxx -

Does Landscaping Increase The Value of My Home?

The first impression is crucial in life, and that of your residence is no exception. The landscaping of your home is often the first impression people have of your home. A healthy lawn, beautiful flowers, an entrance with elegant landscaping, and a backyard with a modern design.

All elements make your home experience peaceful and improve your quality of life. Great landscaping also has other benefits when putting your home on the market: much more attentive potential buyers and higher purchase offers.

Landscaping increases the value of your home.

Many people wonder if landscaping work will increase the value of their home and the answer of real estate experts to this question is clear, yes, landscaping does indeed increase the value of your property. Artificial turf will definitely increase the value of your home. For more information on artificial turf in Austin contact Southern Turf Co.

We can therefore consider that devoting a budget to improving your landscaping is not an expense but rather an investment that will appreciate over time. Indeed, it is one of the only renovations on your house that not only increases the value of your property when you carry out the work but will appreciate over the years.

According to a survey by HomeLight, 94% of top real estate agents say investing in your landscaping means more money in your pocket during a sale. They claim you do not need to spend vast money to do it either.

Taking care of your lawn by mowing regularly, controlling weeds, and applying fertilizer are often simple and inexpensive ways to improve your home’s exterior appearance and make it more attractive to visitors.

A home with a sleek, professional exterior design has a significant advantage over a home that lacks a well-appointed outdoor space.

According to an SF Gate article, this advantage amounts to between 5.5% and 12.7%, depending on the work carried out and the property’s initial value, which translates into an extra $16,500 to $38,100 for a house worth $300,000.

Your residential neighborhood

In addition, your house must be up to your neighborhood’s standards. For example, if all the houses in your residential neighborhood have lovely landscaping and yours does not, it is a safe bet that your house will be worth less than that of your neighbors.

It is the same if your entire neighborhood has a swimming pool and you do not have one. On the other hand, if no one has a swimming pool in your area and you have one, the value of your property will not necessarily increase since it is not a standard in your neighborhood.

Finally, it should also be noted that the return on your investment is not only found when you sell your house, but you also benefit from it in terms of comfort, privacy, and everyday quality of life.

by Mark Foxx -

How To Prevent The Appearance of Mosquitoes?

Collecting and Preserving Insects

Any container holding water can become a breeding ground, but some can produce large numbers of mosquitoes. For example, car covers are excellent places for these insects to develop due to their shape (which prevents water from spilling), their material (insulation), and their dark color, which allows them to maintain the right temperature.

However, other objects inside our houses can also be breeding grounds, such as vases, pot holders, or pet waterers. Therefore, this mosquito can also be raised in an apartment.

The dengue mosquito

It is important to note that this mosquito does not breed in puddles, ditches, lakes, lagoons, or rivers. These places can be breeding grounds for other mosquitoes that do not transmit these diseases.

Since these mosquitoes are a condition for these diseases to circulate, their presence or the increase in the number of mosquitoes increases the risk throughout the community.

Mosquitoes (3)

the mosquito breeds

Many of the containers where the mosquito breeds are not helpful (cans, bottles, tires, pieces of plastic and canvas, cut drums). Therefore, they must be eliminated and prevented from accumulating, both inside houses and outside.

If the containers cannot be eliminated because they are used permanently, let us prevent them from accumulating water by turning them upside down, covering them, or changing the water and brushing them frequently.

Prevention and Control

The only method to control or prevent dengue virus transmission is to control mosquito vectors. There is no vaccine available against dengue, so the best prevention is to avoid being bitten by mosquitoes by using repellents, coils, tablets, and mosquito nets and eliminating potential breeding sites in homes.

We Share Actions To Take Into Account:

  • Prevent mosquitoes from finding places to lay their eggs by applying environmental management and modification.
  • Keep containers where water is stored, such as water tanks, well covered. You can put a plastic covering the mouth and a thread or rope around it.
  • Remove water from containers, tree holes, rocks, walls and fences, wells, abandoned latrines, underground depressions, construction blocks, objects, or instruments.
  • If there are swimming pools and they are not emptied, keep them with enough chlorine to avoid the development of larvae.
  • Keep the lawn short and the garden clean.
  • Cut the weeds in the vicinity of the houses before fumigation.
  • Change the water in the containers every three days so the larvae cannot develop in them, paying particular attention to the vases. Use moist sand instead of water in graveyard vases.
  • Change the water in the animal water every day.
  • Drill holes in the tires used so that water does not accumulate.
  • Remove all kinds of garbage.
  • Periodically clean drainage gutters and check that water does not accumulate because they are uneven.
  • Reduce person-mosquito contact by placing protective mesh on openings.
  • Use personal protection measures at home: put mosquito nets on the windows, and cover strollers and cribs for babies and children with mosquito nets.
  • Wear long-sleeved, light-colored clothing.

The use of insecticides aims to reduce the number of infected adult mosquitoes that could transmit diseases to healthy people, cutting the transmission cycle.

These products are effective against mosquitoes, have low toxicity to humans or warm-blooded animals, and do not harm the environment.

Likewise, it is vital to remember that the products used in fumigations must be handled only by professionals and accompanied by prevention and control measures.

by Mark Foxx -

Aggregates For The Garden, The Secret Of Landscaping Design

One of the most apparent benefits of using dry materials for garden flooring is that it allows us to delimit spaces very well and create unique and highly creative designs.

For those of us who are dedicated to the decoration and creation of gardens, the use of aggregates opens up a wide range of possibilities when choosing the design that best suits the characteristics of the garden or exterior in question.

Arid soils are ideal as a landscape resource. Materials such as gravel or pebbles are natural decorative elements that offer spectacular results in any garden’s design, whether exterior or interior. It is a decoration option that is easy to maintain and install, in addition to allowing you to save a great deal of water.

Some of the benefits of using dry materials for the garden:

  • Its use helps protect the soil in your garden from sudden temperature changes and also helps to moisten the soil.
  • It combines very well with trees and plants of any kind, and its wide variety of colors and textures allows great versatility, which is why they are ubiquitous in garden design.
  • It adjusts to uneven terrain, both in large and small gardens.

Types of arid soils for the garden

There are quite a few options when it comes to using landscaping aggregates to decorate or create the design of your garden, thanks to its wide range of colors, sizes, textures, and styles. That is why in this article, we want to tell you about the most common or those that are in tremendous demand.

Gravel floors

As we already mentioned in this previous article about the boom in the use of gravel for garden decoration, gravel offers much play and a variety of possible designs for your garden with different textures, colors, and shapes. In addition, one of its main attractions is the low maintenance that the use of this dry material requires.

Boulder

Pebbles are one of the most used aggregate materials (along with gravel), as they are versatile decorative stones that can complement or delimit any corner of the garden or outside. They are widely used to draw paths outside or create various shapes in specific areas of the garden.

Unlike gravel, these are larger stones that have been shaped naturally and, thanks to their rounded shape, make them very useful in any space.

Rockeries and Decorative Bowls

Decorative garden bowls are large rounded rocks or stones (similar to the shape of a bowl, hence its name). Their use is becoming more common every month thanks to their great versatile power, capable of playing with various colors.

Decorative bowling pins are ideal for designing gardens in large spaces and can be used in interior and exterior designs.

by Mark Foxx -

Loropetalum, A Tree Full of Color For Your Garden

Loropetalum belongs to the Hamamelidaceae family and is a small shrub variety ideal for decorating gardens or exteriors. It is native to Japan and the area of ​​Southeast Asia.

This shrub can easily reach 4 or 5 meters in height (although it is normal to see them between 2 and 3 meters) and is characterized by its colorful leaves that sprout in late winter and early spring (ideal time for planting or transplant).

Loropetalum leaves are tiny (about 3cm long), green or bronze, depending on the plant’s variety and state of maturation. Its leaves are green in spring and summer, turning to a deep purple in autumn.

The scented flowers of this shrub, which bloom in late winter and early spring, remind us of the shape of spiders due to their long, linear, ribbon-shaped petals, white, pink, or magenta, depending on the species.

Loropetalum Ornamental Shrub Care

This evergreen shrub usually has a rounded and leafy shape, and it does not require much care; in addition, it can be a very successful option to add color to the garden or exterior with little maintenance.

Its decorative flowers and persistent foliage throughout the year with pointed oval leaves will undoubtedly give a unique touch wherever you place it with coppery, pink, and purple colors when its leaves are new and olive green when mature.

Some more characteristics of the tree native to China and Japan:

  • It can be planted in the garden and a pot, but ideally, the plant’s stem should not be buried too much to avoid water stagnation.
  • Irrigation: it is a medium irrigation plant where the ideal is to always let the soil dry between irrigation and irrigation. The younger the plant, the more water it needs. Obviously, in hot weather like summer, you will need more.
  • Flowering: Generally from late winter to April (early spring).
  • Prune: if necessary, at the end of the summer to restore its shape and clean it of dead branches. It is not demanding in this sense.
  • Soil or substrate: ideally, it should be slightly acidic (it does not tolerate limestone soils well). In addition, it must be well drained.
  • Pests and diseases: the Loropetalum is a plant resistant to the usual pests and diseases.
  • Reproduction: by cuttings in summer and from seeds sown in spring.
  • Maintenance: low and medium growth.

Although it can withstand low temperatures, it is always advisable to protect the plant during frosts and avoid prolonged exposure to temperatures of -5/-9 degrees Celsius.

by Mark Foxx -

The Importance of Stones In The Garden

When decorating our garden, there are endless options. However, without a doubt, we can create an excellent decorative complement for our garden through the elements and materials we incorporate into the ground.

For this reason, today, we want to talk about incorporating stones as decorative elements in the garden since they provide countless benefits, such as lower maintenance, than other materials, such as grass. Alternatively, even the possibility of designing compositions such as trails or stream simulations.

Benefits of using stones in garden decoration

One of the most apparent benefits when decorating our exterior with stones is, as we have said, the low maintenance that it entails in areas such as the ground. However, there are also other advantages that we must value when creating our garden, for example :

  • Using small rounded stones (better known as pebbles) that we can add to create paths or small paths in the garden will naturally eliminate the annoying weeds that may grow on the ground.
  • It also allows you to design a beautiful delimited space by combining stones with flowers and plants in a garden or a specific space outside. Countless shapes and materials can be used to design spaces. The secret is to vary the sizes, textures, and colors so that it does not seem monotonous.
  • The stones we use can be used as elements to frame and structure the space attractively, using different types of sizes or colors. Alternatively, even create mosaics or patterns with the stones.
  • Depending on the type of stones with which we create our garden, it can help us drain, absorb, channel, and direct the water towards the drain on rainy days and thus avoid flooding.
  • Using stones will allow you to build a garden fountain, a stream, or a pond, thanks to a pond liner and gravel.
  • The use of stones is also closely related to Zen-style gardens since they combine perfectly with water sources and combine different materials, colors, and sizes of stones to your liking.

To incorporate stones in our gardens as decorative elements, we can use materials such as gravel, rocks, or all kinds of large or small stones.

by Mark Foxx -

Vertical Gardens: What They Are And Benefits

Vertical gardening in urban buildings is a trend that is on the rise in many new constructions due to its multiple benefits.

This vertical garden design trend has been progressively introduced into homes. Whether through unpretending or artificial gardens, the need to live in smaller spaces and to enjoy a small vegetable space both in indoor gardens or outdoor areas on balconies and terraces explains its use more and more at a personal level.

Benefits of a vertical garden design

Among the many benefits of creating a vertical vegetable garden/facade, we highlight the following:

  • They help purify the air by providing oxygen and improving environmental quality.
  • They reduce and regulate the ambient temperature of the place where they are located. Vertical gardening provides a notable improvement in thermal comfort.
  • They promote biodiversity.
  • They undoubtedly favor the aesthetics of the place, providing beauty and volume.
  • They provide mental well-being.
  • They are straightforward to install and care for, as they need less water and have better weed control.
  • They are a perfect solution for houses with limited space.
  • If they are placed on facades, it reduces noise from outside and pollution.
  • They do not need topsoil and provide optimal drainage, preventing leaks.

What to keep in mind when setting up a vertical garden at home

When installing the green wall, we must take into account some details such as:

  • Location in an area where we have access to a water supply and constant light (in the case of natural vertical gardens). On sweltering days like summer, a good practice is to protect the vegetation.
  • The easily accessible site has greater control and better care.
  • Use a vertical solid wall/wall to support the total weight of the vegetation we install. We will also use accessories designed for this, such as floating systems for vertical gardens or modular systems that allow you to put and remove the plants in your way. A structure for traditional vertical gardens is known as a lattice.
  • Use the appropriate substrate for the plants we want to install (outdoor or indoor). The suitable substrate will ensure support, oxygen access to the roots, adequate water retention, and the necessary nutrients.
  • Ensure enough space for plant roots.
  • Irrigation: frequent and short, but in less quantity so as not to flood them (without pressure). In addition, we must ensure that all containers have a hole to drain and prevent water accumulation.

A vertical garden can be defined as a green wall in which a vertical wall covered with different species of plants is installed. The vegetation, which can be natural or artificial, is supported by a structure available in different sizes and used both for the exteriors and interiors of homes.