Bruce Gaudette calls designing your home landscape a road map to a quality garden.
So whether you are trying to enhance curb appeal or just improve your living space, it’s critical to start with a design.
Gaudette has owned Land Hoe Landscape Design for 17 years. He’ll be sharing that design tip and other advice with visitors at the Everett Home &Garden Show. Gaudette’s booth will be a collaboration with landscape professional Pam Roy, who owns Planscapes.
“It’s very easy to go willy-nilly to put together your garden, and one day you step back and you’ve sunk five or six thousand into this yard and you don’t like it,” Gaudette said. “If you have your road map to your garden, you can determine the big-stroke things and the small-stroke things and execute it well and keep it on track.”
Land Hoe specializes in residential landscape improvements. The company — Gaudette came up with the name from his Coast Guard background — spends lots of time these days in the “hardscape category.”
Decks, natural stone paths, retaining walls, and fences and arbors are popular requests, Gaudette said.
Newer smaller homes come with smaller lots, so a nice piece of cedar made into a custom fence or simple arbor, pergola or screen, creates much needed privacy or a structural element, he said.
Besides designing hardcape structures, Landscape Hoe! renovates a landscape by adding “horticulturally interesting plants,” Gaudette said.
Gaudette prides himself in selecting plants that are readily available in the trade.
“Everybody’s home has a number of microclimates,” Gaudette said. “We try to stay very in tune with the appropriate plants, and tailor the plants to meet that need while stretching out the season for color.”
Though it’s a tough economy, Gaudette said people aren’t any less interested in prettying up their homes.
He said landscape design is near the top of the list for ways homeowners can retain their home’s value or make it more attractive on the market.
“Professionally installed landscaping checks in at the top 25 percent of improvements that a homeowner can do,” Gaudette said. “So many real estate deals are made or broken just by somebody pulling up to a house and never looking inside because of how the outside looks.”
Theresa Goffredo: 425-339-3424, goffredo@heraldnet.com.
Land Hoe Mukilteo 425-742-9417 www.landhoe.com
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