Preparing Homes For Sale in Rockland and Bergen

Free monthly newsletter with advice for selling homeowners.

We can help you prepare your home for sale. To sell your house in weeks not months, start with an evaluation by a professional home stager.

Contact us for an in-home evaluation now.

Walkways & Gardens

The Staging Prince can prepare and stage your deck, patio or garden, recommend garden accessories, and advise on plantings for your paths and walkways, low walls and fountains that will make the outside a part of your home and enhance its value, much as a well-conceived finished basement would. We work with landscape architects, garden designers and local contractors.

Make your garden part of your living space

A garden is not just a place to grow vegetables. Integrate it with your living space to make your home more spacious and more appealing to potential buyers.

To read about the many benefits of making your garden part of your home, there may be no better sources than Barbara Blossom Ashmun's Garden Retreats (Chronicle Books, 2000) and Julie Moir Messervy's The Inward Garden (Little, Brown, 1995), both available in bookstores and at your public library.

Landscaping diversity

Take a look at the landscaping around your neighborhood. In the front yard of nearly every house you will likely see an expanse of lawn and a few yews, azaleas or rhododendrons up against the house, with a cherry or pear out in the yard. Nothing wrong with these plants. But when every yard looks much like every other, the uniformity not only makes the neighborhood look boring but it also detracts from each individual home's curb appeal.

This scene is repeated in neighborhoods throughout the country. It's been said that just 50 different plants, among many hundreds available and suitable for landscape planting, make up 90 percent of the landscaping in the U.S. Diversity of plantings as well as imaginative landscape design can make your home distinctive and more appealing -- whether you are selling or not.

Many home stagers have experience in garden and landscape design or can recommend landscape designers. They can also recommend materials and contractors for hardscaping, as well as local garden centers and mail-order nurseries that sell native shrubs that will use less water and maintain biodiversity.

Outdoor photos

Here are some photos showing what we have done with walkways, decks and gardens:

Staging decks:

Staging gardens:

Designing and planting paths and walkways:

Designing and planting low walls:

Gardening is a family activity

Many potential buyers are looking for activities to share with their family. Gardening is one that offers fuller use of your property, enhanced home value, and satisfaction on many levels.