You never get a second chance to make a first impression. This well-known saying is certainly true when it applies to your home. Those few seconds, when a visitor first sees your house, are crucial in creating a positive, neutral or negative impression. This becomes a vitally important consideration when you are selling your home, particularly in a soft real estate market.

This is the third of a three-part series of columns about improving your home’s curb-appeal with some basic landscaping upgrades. That all-important first impression can make the difference between buyers wanting to come inside or simply drive on to the next listing. Even if you are not intending to sell right now, one or two affordable tweaks can put a fresh, attractive face on the home you love.

Last time in this column, I described my number one choice for spicing up a landscape: ornamental grasses. If you missed that or the previous column, drop me an e-mail at steve@landsteward.org and I’ll send you a link where you can read them online.

Today, let’s talk about some trees and shrubs that will be like planting money in you front yard when it comes to appealing to potential buyers.

Japanese Red Maple (Acer palmatum atropurpureum) It’s hard to go wrong here for several reasons, the most important being their extreme beauty.

They work equally well as a specimen multi-stemmed shrub or as a relatively small tree with a mature height somewhere between ten and twenty feet. If you have a bit more room, try two or three in plant groupings.

Another advantage: they are hardy and quite easy to grow. They do just fine in full sun and in various degrees of shade so that if other trees are planted close by, they suffer no adverse effects from the crowding. Landscapers often use Japanese Red Maples in urban settings where large buildings can limit the amount of sun to which they are exposed. They leaf out early in spring & drop their leaves late in autumn.

Holly bushes. Essentially, holly is any tree or shrub of the genus Ilex having red berries and shiny evergreen leaves with prickly edges. Within that wide definition, you can find everything from tiny six-inch dwarves to towering seventy-foot giants.

Hollies come in male and female “genders” and you will need at least one of each if you want the female to bear those traditional holly berries. It’s not easy to tell males from females, but most good nurseries will tag them to indicate which is which. There are some holly varieties that are self fertile so you’d need only one plant in order to have berries.

For fast landscape enhancement, plan on holly bushes that are two to three feet tall that you can use as specimens or foundation plants.

Knockout Roses. I strongly recommend that you consider these beauties as they induce “Oooh’s” and “Ahh’s” from visitors and homebuyers. There are three varieties you could plant to ramp up the curb appeal of your home. Look for Red, Pink or Rainbow Knockout roses.

The blooms of the Rainbow open orange from coral-pink buds and then quickly turn soft coral-pink shading to gold at the base, surrounding a yellow center. All three varieties form compact 3 foot by 3 foot shapes and are quite fast growing.

Nikishi Willow. This fast-grower is spectacular in all seasons. The show begins in spring with yellow catkins in followed by new growth foliage appearing green and creamy white with pink overtones that turns salmon pink by going into fall with leaves turning yellow and winter branches turning a brilliant red.

The Nikishi would be an excellent choice to enhance an entryway or an elegant way to line a walk.

If you’d like to receive a list of seven useful Web sites about enhancing curb appeal, or if you’d like some specific plant suggestions drop me an e-mail at steve@landsteward.org with some details and I’ll reply personally.

The Plant Man is here to help. Send your questions about trees, shrubs and landscaping to steve@landsteward.org and for resources and additional information, or to subscribe to Steve’s free e-mailed newsletter, visit www.landsteward.org

Are you selling your house? Or rather, are you trying and hoping to sell your house, but becoming increasingly depressed about the soft real estate market right now?

Believe it or not, there ARE steps you can take to increase your chances of selling even in a “down” market, and these steps are not inside your house but outside.

For the most part, these steps are relatively easy, meaning you can do them yourself even if you have little or no experience, and they can be carried out with a relatively low investment.

We’re talking curb appeal here, folks!

“Ah,” I hear you say, “Once buyers get inside, they can see what a great house it is.” But what if they decide not to come inside? You are in direct competition with literally hundreds of other homes in the same price range. Buyers have so many to choose from they can afford to be extra picky.

If you don’t think the exterior appearance of your home is a big deal, a survey by the National Association of Realtors found that curb appeal was a “major factor” in 49% of all home sales. Another survey, conducted by HomeGain, an Internet real estate service, claims that spending just $400 to $500 on enhanced landscaping can increase a home’s value by $1,600 to $1,800. Not convinced? Experts at www.landscaping.about.com say that a curb appeal makeover can add 20% to your home’s value.

Let’s look at that from the perspective of a slow real estate market. Yours is one of three homes in your neighborhood for sale at roughly the same price. Same location, same number of bedrooms and so on. But while the other two look ho-hum from the street, your house has a well-trimmed and edged lawn, neat shrubs in mulched, weed-free beds, a clean pathway leading to a front porch with containers of season plants and a freshly painted front door. Your home looks to be, say, 20% more appealing than the other two!

Enhancing your landscaping puts the odds in your favor, compared to the other homes in your area.

In future columns, I’ll provide specific planting suggestions to increase your curb appeal, but first, let’s begin with some basics.

Be objective. For a start, put yourself in the buyer’s shoes. Go outside and walk back and forth looking at your home as if for the first time. What do you REALLY see? What would you criticize if this was someone else’s home?

Watch HGTV and particularly two shows titled “Designed to Sell” and “Secrets That Sell.” You’ll see experts visit a home and be brutally honest about why a home hasn’t sold and what the owners can do to fix it. Then imagine them standing outside your house. What would they say?

Sidewalk and pathway. Clean pathways with a hose and broom, or better still, power wash. If there are cracks or chips, remove any weeds growing there and fix the cracks.

The lawn. Rake away any thatch, aerate and sow some grass seed. Your garden center can advise which variety is best for your location. In extreme cases, invest in a new lawn with fresh sod.

Existing shrubs. You might not notice how those shrubs in front of your home have grown over the years, but buyers will see wild greenery obscuring the windows and they’ll wonder what you’re hiding. Cut them back and shape them neatly. If after that, they still look “woody” and ugly, take a deep breath and dig them up and discard them.

New shrubs. If the front of your house looks sparse and uninviting, invest in a few new shrubs. Take a tip from developers who landscape their new homes with easy-care evergreen shrubs, holly bushes and ornamental grasses. Remember the fresh mulch!

Containers. Some containers on the front steps overflowing with colorful plants say, “Welcome home!”

If you’d like to receive a list of seven useful Web sites about enhancing curb appeal, or if you’d like some specific plant suggestions drop me an e-mail at steve@landsteward.org with some details and I’ll reply personally.

The Plant Man is here to help. Send your questions about trees, shrubs and landscaping to steve@landsteward.org and for resources and additional information, or to subscribe to Steve’s free e-mailed newsletter, visit www.landsteward.org

Unusual or oddly-shaped spaces can create landscaping challenges, as this reader has discovered.

QUESTION: “I need advice on planting bushes or something in a small space. We have a strip along the side of our house that is about 22″ wide and 160″ long, so as you can tell, it is pretty long and narrow. On top of that, there is a tree roughly half way in between that we would really like to keep.

“We are not sure what to plant there and we are hoping to plant something that might provide color year round. We have thought about evergreens but don’t know if that would look right with a different tree in the middle.” – Andrea Deaver

ANSWER: 22 inches is a very narrow space for most shrubs as their roots will probably spread more than that width. Stay with narrower-growing plants such as the sky pencil holly, which will give height, but not width. Varied heights of ornamental grasses are gorgeous, too.

Throwing in some very low growing shrubs and perennials will also spice the area up. Choose shrubs and perennials that flower or produce bright colors throughout the seasons. Select different plants for color, height, and texture and you should be able to create an interesting foundation planting.

QUESTION: “I am considering planting Purple Wintercreeper (along with drifts of other varieties of groundcovers and shrubs) on a large, steep, south-facing bank but I am concerned about its aggressively invasive character. Will the garden center-type lawn edging that you suggest in your article on groundcovers actually work to contain Purple Wintercreeper’s spread? Thank you for your advice.” – Douglas Barker

ANSWER: Yes, lawn edging will work because Purple Wintercreeper is somewhat shallow rooted. It will usually take hold not from the roots but more from the tops that hang over the edging. That is not a big deal if you keep it trimmed once or twice at the most per season with a weed whacker.

QUESTION: “What can I do to get more flowers on my Hydrangea plants? They are so leafy and now the flowers are turning brown.” – Diana

ANSWER: Usually plants that have been fed a lot of high nitrogen fertilizer experience a lot of foliage growth but not many blooms. This could be the reason, if you have been fertilizing them. Hold off the fertilizer and see if they come back with better blooms next season.

QUESTION: “My lawn has begun to showsigns of browning. In fact, two of the outer edges appear to have completely died with just dirt remaining. I have read articles stating that I should just water once a week… but deeply! Is this true? “I will admit that I have been watering at night at about 11 p.m. then again around 6 a.m. This sounds like a mistake according to what I have read. Can you give me a simple 1, 2, 3 on how much, and when to water my lawn. Thanks! Joe Castillo

ANSWER: You don’t mention where you are located, but with your grass going dormant at this time, I’m guessing you have cool season grass. By nature, cool season grass will slow up to the point, sometimes, of going dormant during the heat of summer and then perk back up as the weather begins to cool down.

Regardless of whether you are in the north with cool season grass or in the south with warm season grass, your watering schedule is too frequent. Actually it is better to water a lawn once every 5-7 days and water it longer rather than shorter, more frequent waterings.

Stressing the grass out over a longer period will grow grass with a deeper root system and it will be able to withstand any serious weather problems that may arise, including utility-imposed watering restrictions.

Below is a link to the University of Illinois Extension site on lawn care. It is extremely informative and will help guide you through this period as well as set you up for next spring/summer.

http://www.urbanext.uiuc.edu/lawnchallenge/lesson4.html

The Plant Man is here to help. Send your questions about trees, shrubs and landscaping to steve@landsteward.org and for resources and additional information, or to subscribe to Steve’s free e-mailed newsletter, visit www.landsteward.org