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Gardens Are Booming. Which Outdoor Upgrades Are Worth It?

Gardens Are Booming. Which Outdoor Upgrades Are Worth It?

My garden has gotten all kinds of extra attention during this plague year. With travel and socializing curtailed, my weekends have been free for pruning, edging and compulsive deadheading.

And my outdoor improvements haven’t stopped at those (cost-free) efforts. I’ve also made several trips to the garden center to buy new plants, including three tiny apple trees we now ostentatiously refer to as “the orchard.” I convinced my husband to build a raised bed. We expanded our patio to make more room for socially distanced cocktails.

In this horrible year, I’m grateful for the creative outlet. And so are lots of other people.

Even though millions of Americans are out of work, and the economic contraction is the worst in U.S. history, garden centers have been busy. Sales at building materials and gardens stores are up 11% compared with 2019, despite a bleak retail landscape overall. Most shopping at garden centers happens outside, where Covid-19 seems to hardly spread at all, and it makes sense to invest in our backyards when we’re so confined to them.

But what about after the pandemic? As we pour money into our yards, the question becomes whether any of this landscape improvement adds to the long-term value of our homes. Is it an investment, or just an expenditure?

The National Association of Realtors keeps tabs on which home improvement projects pay off, and their 2018 report on outdoor projects offers both some hope and a reality check.

Compared with indoor home-improvement projects, garden projects are fairly cheap and unintrusive. Renovating a kitchen will set you back tens of thousands of dollars and involve weeks of dust, noise and disruption, while renovating a flower bed is relatively inexpensive — not to mention tranquil.

Because of their relatively low cost, most garden projects do recoup your investment. Thus the outdoor project NAR ranks as the best investment is also the cheapest: lawn care. A $375 outlay for fertilizer and weed control will net you $1,000 in resale value, for an ROI of 267%. But lawns are boring (rhymes with: yawns), so let us speak no more of grass. The other projects atop the NAR list are much more fun.

Basic landscape maintenance — which NAR says includes “planting of approximately 60 perennials or annuals” — also pays for itself, recouping an estimated 100% of its costs. It’s also one of the few household improvements that meaningfully help close house sales: 17% of sellers said it sealed the deal. Only a new roof (33%) and a kitchen upgrade (20%) ranked higher, and both of those projects cost a lot more.

Landscape upgrades — like new trees, shrubs or walkways — also contribute to curb appeal, recoup most of their costs, and help homes sell: Such upgrades closed the deal in 11% of home sales, which is comparable to the impact of a complete kitchen renovation (10%). But NAR estimates a total kitchen reno will set you back $68,000, while a landscape upgrade costs only $6,000. So if you’ve had your eye on a rosebush or redbud, this is your green light to go ahead.

Outdoor living spaces — decks, patios, kitchens and fire pits — recoup a decent percentage of their value, but don’t help homes sell. If you want to invest in one of these, go ahead, but you’re better off doing so because you’ll enjoy it, not because you think it will improve the value of your property.

This is doubly true for adding a new pool, landscape lighting or what realtors call “statement landscapes,” a catch-all term that includes outdoor yoga spaces, bocce courts and “serenity gardens.” (And, presumably, puny orchards.)

There are a few reasons you might want to think twice about these sorts of investments. One is the expense; many of these upgrades are costly. While they do increase the nominal value of your home, you’re unlikely to get back even half of what you spent on them.

Another is personal taste. Quirkiness generally doesn’t help houses sell. One homeowner’s serenity garden is another’s weird New Age sculpture park.

And if some statements can be too bold, others can be too subtle: You might notice $5,000 in gorgeous new landscape lighting, but will a buyer want to pay for it? Probably not.

Then there’s hassle. And yes, I’m talking about swimming pools. It’s hoary realty wisdom that pools can be a turn-off for some buyers. They’re a lot of work and expense to maintain. While some buyers might be on the lookout for a pool, only 2% of sellers say their pool helped them sell their home. That might be changing, at least during the pandemic; pool sales boomed this summer. But how long will that last? 

In the end, you can take all these practicalities into consideration, but the joy of a garden is in its beauty, not its usefulness. Your garden is there to please you and no one else. That’s never been more true than right now. This spring, when neighbors were turning squares of lawn into pandemic “victory gardens” full of vegetables, I planted a cutting garden, sowing my new raised bed with cosmos and zinnias and bachelor’s buttons. I call it my “sanity garden.”

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Sarah Green Carmichael is an editor with Bloomberg Opinion. She was previously managing editor of ideas and commentary at Barron’s, and an executive editor at Harvard Business Review, where she hosted the HBR Ideacast.

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.