Does Your Garden Figure in Plans or Chances That You Will Sell Your Home in the Future?

Estate agents and consumers are more likely to say that a great garden can help to up the value and sale potential of your home, but that a poor garden will almost certainly do the opposite.

If these questions are on your mind you may have plans for a root and branch makeover for your garden or outdoor space or you may just be wanting to freshen up a left over or unnoticed part of it. No matter whether your plans for a change are grand, modest or somewhere in between, it is possible to spend anything from tens to thousands of pounds on a garden water feature that helps to make your hopes for your garden come true.

There are many reasons to want a garden water feature for your home that I have included on this site and that you might like to read about: Educational value Spiritual value Environmental value Social value Some of these may be as important to you, and maybe more so, than its investment value. But if that is one of your concerns then to be clear about an answer it is a good thing to have checked first for any negative situations in your garden that could be improved by having one even if the rest of your garden is perfect. It is probably best to ask yourself how a water feature might be used to deal with an issue that is stopping you from getting a better experience and enjoyment of your particular garden environment.

Obviously a water feature can seem like a delight in itself, even when it's just calling out to you from a catalogue. There is no doubt these can be fantastic and inspiring products for your home. But from the investment point of view you need to plan ahead and try to think of the bigger picture.

So look around your garden and try to see it from a buyers point of view, what’s attractive and what’s not and if there is something about your garden that you've not been quite happy about make a note of that too. Some suggestions of Things to focus on are:

Views into your garden from the house

Views out of your garden and from your house

Sources of nuisance noise coming into your garden

Spaces of your garden that are wasted

Garden Areas where you have never been able to get the best out of them.

For the moment anything like this that you come up with is a 'problem' that you are trying to solve on the way to improving the potential of selling your home at a higher price.

So what questions could you be asking yourself now?

Here are a few possibilities:

•Could your water feature with its planting and landscaping be positioned so as to block out a line of sight from your favourite room or the best place in your garden to an existing blot on the landscape? •Could the sound of the water be a way of masking some nuisance noise that would otherwise spoil the peace of your garden? •Could the water feature improve the attractiveness of your garden by adding interest to an area where it's been difficult to grow things? •Could the water feature be used to screen a part of your garden area that can never be anything but untidy and cluttered? •Could your water feature be a part of your landscaping or outdoor space display that a room or conservatory opens onto, combining the enjoyment of both more closely? •Could your water feature be used to develop your garden in an area that has always been waterlogged or difficult to drain? •If you want or need the sound of the water to be loud could it be positioned further away from your house so that the noise of the water doesn't disturb your conversations or rest? •Could you avoid positioning a water feature in a way that might become a cause of dispute or annoyance between you and your neighbours?

These are the sort of ‘problems’ that it would be good to solve.

You are maybe saying this is kind of similar to design thinking. Well I suppose it is part of it; it’s the planning ahead and big picture bit for the future of your garden. How can a water feature be part of a solution? Well, a garden water feature offers some things that you can control and combine in ways that might deal with the 'problem' you've identified such as;

• The size and extent of any landscaping around it.

• The area of any wall or vertical plane that might be part of it

.• The scope of planting to compliment the water feature.

• The positioning.

• The force and volume of water that affects the sound it makes.

Any of these can be combined and scaled to fix the 'problem' in an infinite number of ways depending upon your house and garden style and the money you are happy to spend on buying a water feature for your garden. What you will have done though is to have found a really important need for your garden’s improvement and how a water feature can have the potential to work with your garden to make your property even more desirable.