Does a good-looking garden add value to your property?

Last year an award-winning landscape architect told me he thinks a good garden adds about $20-50k to the value of a home. In my experience that holds water but there are a few caveats.

Firstly, a property owner or would-be purchaser needs to feel that they can maintain a property. That comes down to good garden design. A Lower Hutt client of mine, who is an interior designer, gave me a design brief asking that one of her investment properties needed a garden that “will look great in three years time” when she intended to sell it. All well and good but it also had to be a garden that a would-be purchaser would love but not feel over-whelmed by. I achieved that by using a mix of natives, succulents like Agave attenuata, and perennials that just need a bit of cutting back at the end of their season. All are easy to maintain. She recently sold the property and achieved a good price, feeding back to me the Agent loved the garden.

Also, a well-managed garden cuts down on work. If designed and maintained correctly, than a garden on a standard-sized residential section should only require the homeowner's attention for 10-30 minutes per week to keep it looking good. Saves on the expense of bringing in someone sporadically to do a big tidy-up.

And a nice garden is a subtle beast. For example, when I do a site tidy-up I prune trees and shape shrubs judiciously such that they catch the eye without being “in your face”. Did a garden in Silverstream a couple of years ago where, rather than going rip & bust, I pruned the Camilleas judiciously. The result was great looking trees that kept their shape much longer than if I’d just whacked through them with a trimmer. So, a slightly bigger investment of time to get a longer-term effect.

There are other things a good gardener and garden designer can do increase the value of their gardens. More to come in future blog posts.