I begin this update with a slight complaint; the wheels of remodeling are turning slowly. So many factors have been working against us (and everyone else in the world), including supply chain, cost of materials, shortage of workers, and weather. However, rather than stand still and let nothing happen, I enlisted the help of custom online landscape design company Yardzen to help us create a landscape and curb appeal plan for our house. Even if it’s taken a while to implement some of the new changes, this little step forward has made a big impact in our plans.
Our house is a decent size, which means it comes with a large yard. The front yard has needed some restructuring . Shrubs of varying size had to be removed after they froze in last winter’s snowpocolypse, a giant magnolia tree covered half of the house on one side, and random tree/shrub things are planted haphazardly around the perimeter of the house. We wanted a plan for what to do with the rest of the plantings in our yard. Yardzen was the most affordable, quick option I’d heard of that had an impressive portfolio. I followed their social media accounts and saw ridiculously cool transformations, and thought to myself, “I want that.”
Once I contacted Yardzen and picked one of their design packages, I was off to the races. (Finally something moving at a normal pace!) I chose the Curb Appeal package, which includes Custom exterior + planting + hardscaping design for your front yard. This means exterior paint, windows, doors, and roof are selected by a team of exterior designers (only available for front yard projects). I knew we wanted to paint our brick and change trim colors, as well as get help selecting a garage door style. Yardzen sends a welcome email and asks you to upload photos and videos of your yard and home, share inspiration photos with them and take their style quizzes, and walk them through your vision for the space so they can focus on your goals. Once you’ve done all that, their designers get to work.
We requested a low maintenance design with some flowering plants and easy flowerbed requirements. Although I absolutely LOVE the look of tons of greenery, trees, and flowers, we are in a season of life where we just don’t have the time or money to keep up with that sort of design. We needed something that doesn’t require a ton of water, care, or thought, but can still look clean and attractive. Yardzen came up with a plan that took those concerns into consideration and fit the budget parameters we gave them, which was around $16,000. (This is a very conservative amount compared to the size of our yard, but we have so many remodeling and updating projects going on that we knew it would be a tight budget.) We also needed a design that adhered to our HOA guidelines, and they delivered on that as well.
Here is what Yardzen came up with:
We love the look of hydrangeas and boxwoods! Two of our favorites. The native plants are a fun touch and mean less watering and time pruning, etc. Though they only changed the color of our home and not the trim as we planned to do, it gave us a good idea of what our red brick house would look like with a white limewash. They also added some wood garage doors and designed a nighttime lighting scheme for exterior lights! (We had to remove one element of the design because our HOA didn’t allow any landscaping on that portion of grass, but it was no big deal.)
BEST PART: Yardzen gives you a comprehensive list of types of plants, how many are needed, and how many boulders, gallons of gravel, etc. and easy to follow maps of where things should be planted. They also gave us a great map of where to have landscape lighting installed. These documents are incredible helpful whether you are doing your install yourself or hiring another company do it.
Yardzen does make recommendations on landscaping companies they have relationships with in your city, so they put me in contact with one. Though their recommended company came in too high for our budget, it was nice to have an initial point of contact to get the ball rolling and show us a ballpark price. We hired a separate company to remove the bushes, trees, and jasmine that needed to go, and then got three more quotes from landscapers about the rest. Estimates ranged wildly; from $36k to $18k to $5k. We finally chose one that worked best with our budget and we were able to add more plants to fill in the open spaces where trees once stood.
We aren’t quite finished with the entire design yet; we realized we’d like to add more decorative boulders, perhaps a green trim around the flowerbeds, and we don’t have it in the budget to get the garage doors just yet. Time to save up!
Working with Yardzen did make our design and planning the easiest, least stressful and minimally time consuming way to revamp our curb appeal. It’s also incredibly affordable when you compare how much it costs to hire a landscape designer! If you want to take the guesswork and sky-high expense out of landscape/curb appeal design for your home, I would recommend Yardzen after our fantastic experience. I only wish we’d started sooner!
*This post was done in collaboration with Yardzen. All opinions are my own.
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