10 Yard Features That Look Expensive (But Cost Almost Nothing)

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That yard three streets over - the one that makes you slow down every time you drive past it. The one that looks expensive.

It probably cost less than yours.

Not less than a landscaper's quote. Less than what you've already spent on your own place, in pieces, over ten years. A tree here. A fountain that seemed like a good idea.

Looking expensive has almost nothing to do with money, and nothing to do with taste either. It comes down to three things - scale, repetition, and knowing what to leave out - and ten specific changes that put all three to work.

Real cost on every one. And where somebody has actually measured what it's worth, that number is in here too:

Also in here: why one big planter beats five small ones every time, the landscape fabric mistake that guarantees weeds instead of preventing them, why a plastic edging strip works for two winters and then looks worse than nothing, the honest truth about dyed black mulch from somebody who told you to rip it out, and a six-question walk you can do at your own curb this weekend.

And the last one is the one I'd do first: go stand at the window you look out of most. What you see from there is the yard you actually live in. Not the one from the street.