There are few feelings like pulling into your home on a summer day and being able to admire the beautiful landscaping that surrounds it. If you want to impress your neighbors and keep your home’s curb appeal high, follow these three tips on summer landscaping improvements.

1. Add Colorful Flowers

If you walk outside and see a dull, boring landscape, you need some color. Colorful flowers provide a warm and welcoming feel to any landscape. They’re attractive to look at and create a safe space for helpful wildlife like bees, birds, and earthworms.

When choosing flowers, make sure to talk with an expert about the right options for your home. The Midwest heat and humidity is great for some types of flowers, but also damaging to others. It is also good to pay attention to the categories the flowers fall in. Certain types of flowers are meant to last for just a season, while others are meant to bloom season after season.

2. Mow Your Lawn & Cut In Edges

If you wanted to keep things even simpler than planting new flowers, regular maintenance can transform your backyard. When it comes to landscaping, maintenance always starts with mowing and cutting.

During the summer, you should regularly mow your lawn. Sadly, there is no exact height all lawns should be, but the experts say to never take off more than 1/3 of the grass height. Once a week is ideal for the summer, but biweekly is acceptable in the early spring when rain is more frequent.

If you miss a week, do not overdo it next week. Your lawn needs to be long enough to produce shade and protect sensitive roots from being exposed to sunlight. Taller grass will grow deeper roots, keep the soil moist and crowd out many weeds. Keeping grass mowed short limits the amount of root growth that occurs. This is the only way your lawn will grow and keep its shiny, green exterior. Cutting your lawn too short ruins your grass and shocks your lawn system.

In addition to regular mowing, homeowners should edge their lawns. A neatly edged lawn along a sidewalk or driveway is a thing of beauty. Luckily, basic string trimmers can get the job the done.

3. Add Lighting

Summers should be spent outside, but if you don’t have enough lighting around the house, how can you enjoy your glorious backyard at night? Whether you’re night swimming, stargazing or enjoying an after-dinner drink, homeowners need some source of light for their front and backyards. Luckily, when it comes to landscaping lighting, you have plenty of options to choose from.

String lights, or lanterns, are always an excellent choice for extra lighting. If placed strategically, they give a nice overall glow to a yard and reduce shadows. On the other hand, spotlighting and small lights along the patio or walkway work well if you’re looking for more shadows and brighter patches of light. If you’ve spent months working on improving your backyard, you owe it to yourself to light your space – enjoy all your hard work by day and night!

A well-lit yard, a fresh cut lawn, and some beautiful flowers are going to do wonders for your lawn. Enjoy the warm days outside with your family and admire the work of art you have created after following these three landscaping tips for the summer.