Container Gardening – Inexpensive Ways to Stage your Home when Selling

You may not have the garden space for a beautiful backyard oasis but, but anyone can master container gardening. No matter how small the space your can enhance your homes curb appeal with container gardening. All you need are decorative pots , potting soil, some plants and you’re ready to go.

The first area of your home to start with is the front door or walkway. Make it welcoming but don’t overdo it to the point it looks like clutter. Be elegant and charming and make sure buyers or guests are not tripping over the container plantings.

How To Care for Plants In Containers

Choose the right plants for sun or shade

Read the tags in the nursery. Learn everything you need to know about the plants and care instructions. Plants that need sun should be in one container and shade plants in another. Do not mix the plants. Some will need moist soil and some dry. Shade plants provide beautiful foliage color and create a tropical feel. For more information on how to mix shade plants get some ideas from Shade Gardens That Inspire!

Watering

Don’t over or underwater the plants, again, read the instructions and you will have success.

• You do not know everything about the plant.
• Too little or too much sunlight.
• Moving or changing position of plants.
• Incorrect soil.
• No transplanting.
• Ignoring the pests.
• Carelessness.
• Less or no fertilizer.
• Over-fertilization.
• No pinching, deadheading, and pruning.
• Exposing to extreme temperatures.

Caring for gardens may feel daunting but if you follow some simple gardening tips and keep a to do list handy you will have a green thumb in no time.

Color and Design

Know you color wheel and pick plants with complementary colors. If you have a yellow daisy with purple center pick a foliage plant that has purple leaves to help that color pop. Chartreuse green vines cascading over the side will be a beautiful color with purple. You can  use green potato vine and purple ones as well. Throw in some dainty white flowers to give is some glow. Be Creative! 

At the nursery can play with plants and see what looks good together. Don’t forget a centerpiece like spikes of grass or taller plant. You are the artist here!

My favorite are shade plants with colorful foliage. I like to combine coleus, and and impatiens with elephant ears. So tropical! This looks great on a patio creating an inviting space for entertaining. Potential buyers will love the feel on this inviting space and visualize entertaining their guests on summer night.

Evergreens

The dwarf spruce or boxwoods are well suited for container gardening, for example, grows to a full height of between only 4-6 feet tall. These beautiful, small spruce trees also have soft, bright green needles when they are young, and color to a gorgeous silver-green as they mature.

Herbs in Containers

Having a container full of scent appeal to guests sitting nearby on the patio. The fragrance of lemon grass, basil, oregano, mint or rosemary will set the mood during a showing or garden party.

Foliage Color

Having a container full of scent appeal to guests sitting nearby on the patio. The fragrance of lemon grass, basil, oregano, mint or rosemary will set the mood during a showing or garden party.

Shady areas

Use graceful creeping Jenny spilling over the sides of planters and put them back in the ground in the fall to use again next year. Caldiums of different colors make a beautiful shade addition to a shady area on your patio or front step. Position this planter in the shade and water regularly for a gorgeous, easy-to-maintain display.

Hanging Containers:

Decorate a bare wall in an outdoor space, and it will look just as beautiful whether you set it against brick, concrete wood. Use bright colors for focal point like zinnias and yellow tuberous begonias. Add white and blue for color and golden lantana add an extra hint of color. — Finally, English ivy, or potato vines to cascade over the sides.

Spring Bulb Containers

Combine a burst of daffodils with bold hues and fragrant seasonal blooms for colorful containers that keep on giving.

Pair it with your tulips, daffodils, pansies, heuchera, and variegated ivy. Use These simply shaped concrete pots. Let the pansies flow over the sides along with heuchera (red and green), and variegated ivy. You can move containers to wherever you need color on a particular day, be it your front door, porch, steps, or patio. As soon as the bulbs finish blooming, plant them in the garden.

Add a Tropical Feel to your Patio

Are you dreaming of a summer vacation? Bring the Tropics to your patio with a combination of elephant ears in various colors, ferns, orange, red and white sun impatiens, purple Persian Shield with chartreuse green elephant ears cascading down the sides.

Succulents

Brighten your outdoor table with a low bowl of sophisticated succulents. These plants are drought-tolerant plants. The bowl of mixed succulents makes a great centerpiece, creating a mixture of tones, shapes, and textures. Consider using echeverias, sedums, and other similar plantings. Succulents are drought tolerant and are low-maintenance plants that will last until frost. I put mine in the ground in Connecticut and most make it through the winter.

Grasses for Texture

Sometimes design is actually all about the form rather than the function. Grasses have distinctive visual features which create amazing sights in a gorgeous patio setting. Pay special attention to how the forms work together. Grasses also sound beautiful as they blow in the wind. Great for around pool areas.

Evergreens in Containers

Potted boxwoods offer the beauty of formal elegance with the simplicity of little maintenance.

Vines on railings

Raised Urns

Mandevilla is a beautiful, bright flowering and climbing vine found throughout the South. Mandevillas can thrive in containers, which twines its way through the railings on decks or up walls. It thrives in hot weather , Mandevilla can grow more than 10 feet a year, and will bloom continuously from spring until the first frost. Bring the containers inside for cold season.

Window Boxes

Raised Urns

Raised urns have wonderful architectural impact and are truly special containers that you can elevate them for impact. Urns are used in a semi-formal gardens, front gates, and front entryways. Filled them with with pink verbenas and white bacopas. The verbenas and bacopas cascade over the sides, enhancing the the graceful lines of the urns.

Perennials in Containers

I always look for season sales at local nurseries and stock up on perennials for next year. Most gardeners use annuals in their containers and potted planters but you can add great foliage color with perennials. You can make them permanent additions to the landscape in the fall. Suggested perennials are gerbera daisies, salvias, shasta daisies, daylilies, and sweet potato vines. Pick up pottery at tag sales and year end clearance sales at nurseries.

Where to place the containers to optimize home staging for the sale of your home.

Patio

No matter how small your patio is you can make it an inviting and peaceful area to enjoy outdoor dining and a relaxing place to spend time. Using containers to allow plants to grow up the walls or over railings are a great space saver.

Front steps

Window boxes

Walls

Walls are a great place to showcase some beautiful potter and add to the vertical height of plants that cascade over stone walls.

In gardens

I have a wildflower garden with soil that is not the best for growing annuals. Having a few potted plants Dahlias in this garden looks amazing and adds to the color of the garden design.

Pathways

You can add garden art to your home buy using colorful potters that you place around your property to lead your eye into other garden area. If you have pathways through a wooded shade garden the soil may have excessive roots and dry soil. Trees will always take the water first and leave the little for understudy plantings. This is where potted plant have a chance to survive in their own container.

Be sure to water them and use slow release fertilizer to keep them healthy and flowering. I like to dabble elephant ears throughout the shade areas for a tropical feel. Be sure to dig them up if you live in colder climates. Store them in cool dry place for the winter and put them back in the spring. Scatter impatiens around for color next to the ferns.

Indoors Plants

I am not a big fan of too many indoor plants. Most of the time in can make the home look cluttered. You have to really know what you are doing to pull this off if you are staging you home to sell. If your plants are all piled in front of a sliding glass door to a deck or patio it will look very cluttered and stop your eye from viewing the beautiful deck and outdoor scenery. 

Container Gardens

Additional Information:

Curb appeal is very important to the sale of your home and it is important to pay attention to the outside landscaping and exterior of your home. This is the first thing people will see when arriving to view your house. Making your home welcoming and inviting doesn’t have to break the bank.  Danny Margagliano has provided a guide for home sellers to stage their property for sale.

Homes with small yards it can be difficult to stage when selling but some imagination you can make your home appealing to buyers. Sharon Paxson has some creative ideas for to make the most of their small gardens.

If your house is on the market or coming on the market don’t forget to stage your outdoor living spaces!  The outdoor living areas can be almost as important as the house to some buyers. Kevin Vitali has some great ideas on staging your decks and patios.

Adding outdoor lighting can create a lovely ambiance in a backyard. Bill Gassett discusses Ways to Make Your Outdoor Space Classy. He also shares specific perennials to utilize to add color in the backyard.

Paul Sian has written a detailed post about Tips for Creating a Better Landscape. In the article, he discusses how adding flowers can draw attention to certain parts of a home.

More information on Garden Design & Landscaping Tips for home buyers and sellers.

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Real estate and garden information was provided by Eileen Anderson, recognized leader in her field.

More information on Garden Design & Landscaping Tips for home buyers and sellers.

If you are looking to hire a top realtor, I can be reached via email at Eileen@eileenandersonrealtor.com or by phone at 860-966-2112.

I am licensed for residential real estate sales in the state of Connecticut including but not limited to the following CT towns: Avon, Bloomfield, Burlington, Barkhamsted, Canton, Colebrook, Granby, East Granby, Hartland, Hartford, Suffield, Windsor, New Hartford, North Granby, Farmington, Winchester, Newington, Litchfield, Simsbury, Suffield and West Hartford, CT.