Garden staging: an asset for selling your home

What is garden staging?

The term “garden staging” is modelled on another: “home staging,” which involves relooking or showcasing the interior of a house or flat to make it more neutral, refresh it, and decorate it according to current trends. The idea is to entice potential buyers of a property and help them envision what could be their future home. With the television show “Selling Houses,” the trend of home staging gained popularity, and professionals specialising in this field began to offer their services. Like home staging, garden staging involves a relooking operation to convince the buyer, but this time applied to the garden. The garden is indeed an additional asset in selling a house, as it is often considered an extra room, where one can live outdoors while still being at home.

Garden staging involves making the garden clean, pleasant, and trendy so that it becomes an additional selling point and the buyer feels inclined to live there. As with home staging, professionals have made garden staging their specialty. If you wish to carry out this operation yourself, here are some simple steps to follow.

It all starts with a thorough cleaning of the garden

How to give your garden a makeover?

Garden staging involves several steps. The first is to assess the situation and clean the garden to make it pristine: clear the space if it is too cluttered, remove damaged plants and decorations or features, in short, refresh the garden and restore it to its former glory. The following steps involve enhancing the space at a minimum to make it inviting, following current trends and ensuring it is beautifully arranged and planted. The final step is decoration: the finishing touch that will make your garden pleasant and welcoming for everyone.

Tidying and Cleaning Your Garden

Let’s start by clearing out to maximise space and showcase the garden’s full potential. The idea is to create a clean slate while maintaining the garden’s basic structure to avoid incurring excessive costs in the makeover. Remove any furniture or decorations that have been damaged by time, old pots, old tools, or anything that clutters and detracts from the appearance of a new garden.

Regarding vegetation, mow the lawn, remove any faded plants, as well as weeds, and prune the trees and bushes if necessary to benefit, for example, from more sunlight or to move freely around the garden.

In terms of landscaping, you can renovate the flooring, wooden terrace, fences, or walls. Next, clean the furniture and items that will remain in place.

Also clean the terrace, remove damaged pots…

Enhancing your garden

Once the big garden clean-up is done, you can start enhancing the space in a simple way that is likely to please everyone, without breaking the bank. You can look for ideas in garden design shops or on dedicated websites.

Generally, people enjoy being able to sit and relax in their garden. To make the garden welcoming, you can install a corner with a table and chairs for dining in the sun, for example, and consider a parasol if the sun is very strong. Alternatively, you could create a lounge area with armchairs and a coffee table for reading or enjoying a drink outside. The idea is to have a functional garden that meets everyone’s needs.

The current trend in garden staging is to depersonalise your garden and refresh it by adding, without overdoing it, neutral colours, furniture, and plants. This allows potential buyers to feel like they are in an outdoor space they can rearrange as they wish, rather than feeling like they are in someone else’s home.

Neutral choices are often recommended for upcoming viewings

Making new plantings

A garden is primarily a slice of nature. The plantings should be impeccable, even if they remain simple or few in number. We will therefore highlight the plants we have decided to keep and complement them with new plantings, if necessary, to fill a bare border or a fence, for example.

When it comes to new plantings, make your life easier. Choose plants suited to the climate of your region as well as the exposure of your garden. Opt for easy-to-maintain plants and install just enough, without overdoing it, so that the future buyer can let their imagination run wild and envision a garden that will be theirs. Keep it simple, consider the practical side, and install seasonal plants with long flowering periods, for example.

If your garden has less interesting corners than others, you can use plants to enhance them or mask their imperfections. Install a climbing plant along an unsightly wall, for instance, or on a fence that might disrupt the privacy of your garden. You can also plant a hedge to shield the garden from the gaze of passers-by, if that is the case.

Add some flowering plants if necessary to enhance the garden

Decorating your garden

Finally, the finishing touch arrives: that of decoration. Consider placing a candle on the garden table, a pot of fresh flowers, or a small lantern. Add joyful splashes of colour without overcrowding the space, or unusual items like a hanging wind chime to create a soothing musicality at little cost. Add trendy little lanterns to bring a slightly festive atmosphere or cushions to offer a comfortable and warm ambiance. You can also turn to a few accessories to make the garden livelier, such as a lovely birdhouse or a feeder.

For a decoration that remains neutral and pleasant, you can draw inspiration from the latest trends on the subject.

The addition of decorative elements like candles or flowers is a bonus

And the budget?

To give you an idea of the budget, it is recommended to allocate between 0.5% and 1.5% of the property’s value for garden staging.

It’s best to set a budget for sprucing up your garden and stick to it, as garden staging can quickly turn into a very costly project. Refresh and decorate your garden minimally and calculate the necessary expenses before embarking on this operation!

And if you are selling not a house, but a flat with a balcony or terrace, or even a courtyard, you can also undertake a cleaning and refreshing operation of your outdoor space to better showcase your property.