Landscaping on a Budget

With prices rising at the pumps and in the grocery stores, many homeowners are putting their landscaping projects on hold. Fortunately, there is no shortage of ways to create beautiful, eye-catching landscaping on a budget, and it doesn’t have to cost a fortune to maintain it, either. Below are some tips for getting the most out of your landscape without breaking the bank.

Reduce the Size of Your Lawn

First, if you want to save money on landscaping and its associated maintenance costs, it’s beneficial to reduce the size of your lawn. This may seem impossible at first, but there are a few interesting and beautiful ways to accomplish this. Laying down newspaper over the areas where you don’t want grass will kill it effectively, and it’s up to you to decide what to put in its place. Landscape fabric and mulch might do the trick, or you might even opt to create a mixed bed of ornamental grasses, shrubs, and perennials that require little maintenance and thrive in your zone.

Build a Pond Yourself

If you’ve ever inquired about installing a pond, you’ve likely been taken aback at the quotes. There’s quite a bit of work that goes into it, and the labor doesn’t come cheap. If you’re willing to do it yourself, you can acquire pond liners and modern pumps inexpensively. Just dig the pond, line it, and install the pump to create the bones of your water feature. Then, you can use landscaping rock or other homemade features to spruce it up. The more labor you can do on your own, the more you will save.

Lay a Brick Patio

Creating a patio from scratch may seem like a lot of work, but it’s possible to create a perfectly functional and beautiful patio by laying bricks over sand. With careful planning, you may not even need to cut any of the bricks – the main reason DIYers hire professionals to lay their patios in the first place. If a patio is too big a project at first, try a stone walkway over sand, instead. Lay down the sand, cover it with river rock, and then lay your walkway stones over the river rock to create a durable, aesthetically pleasing walkway.

Buy Local Plants

Landscaping gets expensive when you start buying plants that aren’t native to your area, both in terms of initial cost and the cost of maintenance over time. Rather than trying to force a plant to grow in your yard with ample water and lots of plant food, shop locally for native species, instead. Remember that cheap flowers at the local home improvement store won’t be the best quality, and they will likely need a little TLC at first to thrive. Nevertheless, if you choose your local plants with care, you might be surprised at how beautiful your yard can be – and how little money it takes to maintain that beauty.

Recycle Containers & Start a Compost Bin

Finally, if you’re someone who has extra containers – totes, bins, buckets – that you aren’t using, a container garden is easier to maintain than a classic garden, and it requires less water, too. In fact, if you’re willing to start your own compost bin or heap, you can use everyday household scraps to make your own fertilizer, too! Check your local area for free city-wide or county-wide compost; many locations make compost available to their residents on a first-come, first-served basis.

Landscaping doesn’t have to cost a small fortune, and it doesn’t take hundreds of dollars a year in maintenance, either. Look for opportunities to reuse what you already have, choose plants that are native to your environment, and above all else, try to make your actual lawn smaller. At HK Contractors we help customers use all these options to work hand-in-hand to save them money without sacrificing curb appeal. Reach out and let us know how we can do the same for you!