One way to improve the look of your home's curb appeal is to incorporate a garden into your property. However, the best looking gardens aren't created in a slapdash manner. They're carefully planned out ahead of time in order to maximize the aesthetic value. If you're thinking about adding a garden to your home, here's some advice on planning and designing a garden you can be proud of that will add resale value to your home.

The first thing to remember is that you don't have to be a professional landscaper or architect to design a garden. You just have to have a basic sense of color and space. Plan your garden so that plants of similar sizes, styles, or colors compliment one another, and lay out the whole so that is it is easily navigable, accessible, and has some places where people can stop, rest, and enjoy the scenery to maximum effect. Your plot size will have an effect on how things are laid out.

You should commit these designs to paper so you can keep things straight when you're doing the rest of your planning, but it's not necessary to be a professional draftsperson to do so. Most people can get away with taking basic measurements of the plot size outside their house and filling it in with basic notations such as "rose bush here" or "path to house." This paper plan isn't just for you, you'll also need something to show the store clerks when you go to buy your materials.

Before you head for the store, however, make a list of the materials you think you're going to need and the quantities of each material. Measure the length of the area you want to tackle so you can order the supplies and estimate how many of each plant you're going to want so the store clerk can fetch the items for you and recommend some tools you may want to buy so that you can more easily install the items you've bought.

Some people find the task of planning and designing gardens for their home beyond their abilities. If this is the case for you, you can hire a landscape architect to design one for you, buy a book of pre-designed garden schemes, or go in and talk to the employees at your local nursery or home improvement store for their help and advice.