This is part 2 of my series on Home Staging.

(This part is about staging the front yard: remember, first impressions are key is you want to sell your home!)

Whether you are selling your home or just want to make your visitors feel more welcome, staging your front yard will help make a good first impression. Staging is a home selling trick where the home seller treats the home as a stage, and sets the stage with furnishings and accessories that will encourage a buyer to choose their house. By creating a generic but welcoming and slightly luxurious atmosphere in the home, home stages hope to lure in the buyers and make them want to stay. Staging the front yard is slightly different, as the object is not to linger, but to draw the visitor or potential buyer into the home.

The first step to staging your front yard is to subtract rather than add. Take a photograph of your front yard. What do you see? All the clutter that you have learned to ignore will be clearly seen in a photograph. Hide the trashcan and recycling bins. Figure out a way to conceal the AC unit and utility boxes. Remember that the purpose of staging a home for sale is to draw attention to selling points, and hide less attractive features. Do not have a flowerbed with a utility box or municipal light pole as the focal point in your staged front yard! Clean up any rubbish or trash in the yard. Stacks of anything should find a home somewhere else, even if they are gardening tools or supplies. You cannot stage your yard until it is clean and clutter-free. Also, take this opportunity to inspect the yard close-up: remove anything left behind by the neighbor’s dog and destroy those fire ant beds!

A staged yard will have a lush green lawn. Many people obsess over green grass. Making sure that the cutting blades on your mower are sharp and not mowing the grass too short will help keep your lawn healthy and looking its best. Fertilizer, organic or slow-release, should be applied to the lawn a few times a year: after the last frost and during the height of the growing season. If you are selling your home, applying fertilizer the month before will help green up your lawn and create the perfect background for staging your front yard. Watering infrequently but deeply will ensure that the grass develops a healthy root system.

After the lawn is prepped, continue staging your front yard by addressing problems with the beds. Weed the beds and mulch them. Mulch now comes in a variety of colors that would be effective and attractive to use when staging your front yard. Remember though, the purpose of mulch in staging your yard is to complement the house, not clash with it. Red mulch, for instance, looks lovely with a red brick home, but stands out too much against a light colored house.

The beds should also be clearly delineated with a clean, sharp edge. This can be achieved by either installing edging or by cutting a clean edge with a sharpened spade or shovel. When choosing edging for your staged front yard, remember that the edging should blend with the home rather than stand out. Choose material that is similar in color or texture to the home’s exterior or the paths and drive when staging your front yard.

Flowers add interest to your staged front yard. Consider planting annuals in your beds and by your front door. If you intend to stay in your home rather than sell it, buy some perennial flowers, bulbs or flowering shrubs and planting them in your front yard. When staging your yard, make sure there is always something interesting in the front yard: flowers, fall leaves, or berries.

When choosing flower color when staging your front yard, be sure to compliment the color of the house. Red flowers stand out against a yellow or gray exterior. Lighter colors are best seen against a dark backdrop. White or pink flowers will be seen best from the street, while cool colors recede and make yard look bigger by seeming further away. Pick up the color of the front door with blooms and foliage colors when staging the front yard in order to draw attention to the entrance. Placing bright or light colors along the front path or near the stoop will lead the visitor or potential buyer into the house.

Trim shrubs and hedges when staging your front yard. If bushes are kept in a more natural shape, still trim them slightly to give them a more balanced shape. Remember to stop frequently and stand back to inspect your work. It is better to under trim than over trim, as you can correct mistakes if you have not trimmed enough. Be careful: there may not be time for shrubs to grow out their bad haircut if you trim too vigorously!