Fall reveals landscaping flaws, and home buyers need to pay attention. Gardens may not be at their best this time of year, but that shouldn’t deter house hunters from giving them serious attention.
This is a great time to evaluate a home’s landscaping, said Sharon Bradley, a landscape architect. Without the distraction of all those daffodils, in fact, house hunters might be more likely to notice serious flaws, and they can quickly get a sense of how a property will feel most of the year, long after the rhododendrons have settled down.
“Textures are what show best this time of year”, she said. Ornamental grasses, sedums and evergreens will be especially of interest.
The more subdued season do pose challenges, but with a little imagination, a prospective buyer can make educated projections of a property’s year-round appeal.
Some plants, such as bulbs, will be completely hidden now. Others you will have to identify by their foliage. If you can’t do that yourself, bring along help, wither in the form of a gardening-savvy friends or a hired hand such as a landscape architect. research the plants you find. Internet searches, a reference book or a visit to a gardening center can give you a general idea of how your plants will look the rest of the year.
Light patterns can be tricky to judge in autumn and winter. A window that picks up full sun in January, for example, might receive only dappled light when the canopy of deciduous trees returns. But there are ways to infer how much light a spot gets during the summer and spring. For example, you might wonder whether a dogwood gets enough sun to fully flower in the spring. You can’t see the flowers in the fall, said Jay Graham, a landscape architect, but you can see the fruit. Lots of fruit means there were plenty of flowers six months earlier.
It’s also easier at the end of the growing season to tell which plants are hardiest — especially after extreme weather. “Any plants that have survived this summer are tough,” Bradley said.
A property’s appearance in the fall is also a good test of the previous owner’s commitment to the year-round planning and maintenance that attractive landscaping requires. “A really good garden would look great this time of year,” Graham said.
Graham added prospective buyers can tell if a lawn is really healthy now, for example. “Weeds are more apparent” than they might be in the spring. Other things to examine are the grading, the stability of architectural features, and the health of the trees on the property, all of which can be disguised when the plants are in their springtime glory.
Study the drainage patterns. Look for erosion, bare spots, low spots and puddles. Is water moving away from the foundation of the house or toward it? Look closely at any retaining walls for signs that they might be undermined. Even bare oaks and maples can reveal clues to their health. You’ll want to look for deep scars or fissures, as well as signs of recent construction or excavation around the roots. Excavation can do deep damage that doesn’t fully reveal itself until a couple of years later. If you have any doubts about the health of a particular tree, call in an arborist for a professional evaluation. “You don’t want to buy a house and get hit with $10,000 worth of tree removal fees,” said Bradley.
You also don’t want to decide on a house based on a tree’s presence, only to lose it a few month later. One of his clients loved a large oak in the front yard of the house, he said. “It was one of the reasons they bought this place.” But once they moved in and began to clean up the leaf litter at the base of the tree, they discovered that the roots had been seriously damaged. “They wound up having to cut it down.”