Most homeowners concentrate on the inside of their homes when trying to boost value, spending money on expensive and extensive projects such as kitchen and bathroom remodels. But curb appeal is just as important as what the interior of your home looks like, and when trying to get the biggest bang for your buck on home projects, there are very few that can beat the return on investment you get from landscaping.

Studies have shown that landscaping can boost your home’s resale value by as much as 14%, and landscaping improvements are among the few improvements you can make to your home where you are likely to improve value by more than what you spend on them. In fact, studies have shown that spending as little as 5% on your landscape can give you a return on investment of as much as 150%. By contrast, a minor kitchen remodel gets you an ROI of less than 90%. In addition, taking care of your landscape and making improvements can reduce the time it takes to sell your home by as much as six weeks.

There are many landscape improvements that you can make. You can add a retaining wall, which can offer both aesthetic and practical value. The right retaining wall design can help with drainage and erosion issues on your property, for example. Having some professional landscape design also can boost your curb appeal and also take care of drainage or other problems. These two options both are fairly pricey. If you don’t or can’t spend that kind of money on your landscape, there are plenty of other smaller projects you can do yourself or hire landscapers to do.

Something as simple as filling in bare or patchy spots in your lawn can give a big boost to your curb appeal and your home value. Other fairly simple projects you can do yourself include trimming trees and shrubbery, planting flowers or other fauna and cleaning up debris around your property. You can go beyond just the landscape and take care of other exterior improvements such as painting trim, filling in cracks in concrete and repairing siding, gutters and downspouts and windows.

Ultimately, you want to do whatever you can to improve your curb appeal, especially if you are trying to sell your home. Spending money on landscape and other exterior improvements is worth the investment and will boost your home’s value by at least as much as you spend.