Create Low Maintenance Landscapes Using Trees

A few strategically placed trees can boost the value of your home, improve the ecosystem in your yard and make your home more energy efficient. You can plant many of them yourself, and if you pick native trees that belong in your local habitat, you can reduce the water-consumption level of your entire landscaping scheme. Here are some tips for choosing the right trees for your front-yard landscaping.

Trees: The All-Around Home Improvement Plant

According to the Arbor Day Foundation, trees can not only beautify your yard, but actually add value to your home. But you don’t have to wait until you’re ready to sell to reap the financial benefits that come with planting trees as part of your landscaping scheme. A tree or three can help you reduce energy bills all year long by producing cooling shade in the summer, while offering outdoor thermal insulation in the winter in the form of a windbreak against freezing gusts during the winter months.

Beautiful and beneficial, trees beautify any yard or landscape.

In fact, trees placed strategically around a structure can reduce air conditioning needs by around 30 percent, and can reduce heating bills by between 20 and 50 percent. A mature, healthy adult tree adds 10 percent to a home’s value.

Trees are also nice to look at. Simple visual exposure to trees has been shown to result in a dramatic reduction in stress in just five minutes.

Flowers, Fruit, Needles and Seasonal Cycles: Select with Maintenance in Mind.

As discussed in the article “Make Peace with the Trees: Low-Maintenance Landscaping Trees,” the most important thing to consider when it comes to a tree’s level of required maintenance is its natural cycle, from fruit to flowers to leaves falling.

Flowering trees are beautiful – just look at a magnolia.

But when you talk to people who own a magnolia, they are likely to point to the number of petals they have to sweep up day after day. Fruit trees are productive, useful and beautiful. But if you’re not actually going to use the fruit, the number of apple or lemons can become absolutely overwhelming. Pine trees, on the other hand, require very little maintenance, even though they shed needles all year round.

Trees make your home more valuable and lower bills.

Trees are beautiful, they add value, they decrease the need for energy consumption. They also reduce stress and make your home more likely to sell. The good news is, trees don’t have to be a high-maintenance burden. Choosing the right kind of tree for the right place can be a low-maintenance, low-cost, water-saving addition to any landscaping scheme.

Andrew Lisa is a freelance writer who covers home design and real estate.