8 Winter Landscaping Updates to Entice Homebuyers

Though there is less competition, more serious buyers, and other advantages to selling your home in the winter, many homeowners struggle with curb appeal. When the white and gray winter landscape sets in, many homeowners give up. This makes it easy for great winter landscaping to stand out from the crowd. With a bit of careful planning and strategic positioning, your home’s exterior can still wow winter buyers. 

Use These 8 Winter Landscaping Updates to Entice Buyers 

While summer landscapes are all about color and life, winter landscapes give you a chance to leverage other visual elements like shapes, textures, lines, and negative space. Keep these elements in mind as you consider your winter landscaping.  

1. Remove wilted plants

Dead, wilted grasses and plants give your home’s exterior a drab, sad look. Remove any dead annuals and cut back or mulch over dormant perennials. Some perennial plants or grasses that maintain their shape can stay. Perennials that produce seeds to attract birds can also stay, as visiting birds will make your home look cozy and friendly. 

2. Clear driveways and paths

Besides enticing homebuyers, this winter landscaping update will also protect your visitors from slips. Make sure your driveway and paths are shoveled and de-iced at all times. A clear driveway is welcoming to prospective buyers, even if they are just driving by to look. Clear pathways not only bring visitors safely into your home, but they also break up white spaces with subtle, elegant lines. 

3. Hardy, Colorful Plants 

Several hardy shrubs, trees, and flowers show off colorful winter leaves, blooms, berries, and bark. These cheery pops of color will stand out even more dramatically against a snowy white background. If you can plan your four-season garden in the summer, plant larger bushes or trees early. If not, smaller plants in decorative pots are just as effective winter landscaping additions. Try camellias, winter jasmine, winterberry holly, cotoneaster, japanese maple, red-stemmed dogwood, witch hazel, or helleborus. 

4. Textural Grasses

Not all grasses bend and wilt in the winter, some keep their shape and color. Mix together ornamental grasses with different shades like dark brown, red, orange and tan or silver, blue, and green. You could also try mixing different shapes, heights, and textures. Try plume grass, carex, sweet flag, silver spear, fountain grass or maiden grass. 

5. Shapely Shrubs

Overgrown shrubs give your home an unkempt look, but sculpted shrubbery will make your home look neat and attractive. There’s no need to use complicated shapes; simply trim hedges into uniform ovals or squares. If your home displays angular elements like shutters, soften the shapes with rounded shrubs. Take the opposite approach if your home has rounded bay windows or arches and sharpen the look with square shrubs. 

6. Lighting

With longer nights and less daylight, lighting elements are powerful winter landscaping updates. Use orange lanterns around pathways or gardens to invoke a cozy charm or try blue or green lights around focal points like statues or trees to add modern sophistication. Whichever you choose, stick with one color, use decorative lighting sparingly to maximize the impact, and use gentle, low-voltage lighting. 

7. Focal points

With no leaves, little color, and a mostly white background, focal points become even more noticeable in winter. Focal points don’t have to be overly complex; they can be as simple as a well-tended bench, bird bath, statue, decorative rock, even a stately evergreen. If the focal point is large, use smaller grasses, rocks, or flowers to highlight it. If the focal point is smaller, use lighting, pathways, or color to draw the eye. 

8. Evergreens

While large, bushy conifers will make your home look cozy and inviting, your evergreens don’t have to be huge. A few small potted trees will add color and coziness just as effectively. If you don’t have fully-grown evergreens and you can’t get potted trees, use decorative evergreen boughs. Green wreaths on the door add cheer throughout the winter and empty pots or gardens are a great place to put pine bough winter bouquets. 

Whatever winter landscaping elements you choose, it’s important to keep your entire landscape in mind. Choose colors and shapes that complement your siding, shutters, doors, or other exterior elements. Remember that the point is to elevate your home’s exterior and not distract from it, so keep your winter landscaping neat and low-key. 

What winter landscaping do you use around your home? What do you look for in a beautiful winter landscape? Leave a comment!