Gardens bare cool secrets to buyers

Gardens might not be at their best in the coming cold weeks of the year, but that shouldn't deter house hunters from giving them serious attention.

Fall and winter are great times to evaluate a home's landscaping, says Sharon Bradley, a landscape architect in Laurel, Md. Without the distraction of all those daffodils, in fact, house hunters might be more likely to notice serious flaws, and they quickly can get a sense of how a property will feel most of the year, long after most blooms have settled down.

"Textures are what show best this time of year," she says.

Ornamental grasses, sedums and evergreens especially will be of interest.

The more subdued seasons do pose challenges, but with a careful eye, some research and a little imagination, a prospective home buyer can make educated projections of a property's year-round appeal.

Some plants, such as bulbs, will be hidden now. Others you will have to identify by their foliage. If you can't do that yourself, bring along help, either in the form of a gardening-savvy friend or a hired hand such as a landscape architect. Research the plants you find. Web searches, a reference book or a visit to a gardening center can give you a general idea of how the plants will look the rest of the year.

Light patterns can be tricky to judge in autumn and winter. A window that picks up full sun in January, for example, might receive only dappled light when the canopy of deciduous trees returns. But there are ways to infer how much light a spot gets during the summer and spring. For example, you might wonder whether a dogwood gets enough sun to fully flower in the spring. You can't see the flowers in the fall, says Jay Graham, a landscape architect based in Annapolis, Md., but you can see the fruit. Lots of fruit means there were plenty of flowers six months earlier.

It's also easier at the end of the growing season to tell which plants are hardiest, especially after extreme weather such as this year's prolonged drought.

A property's appearance in the fall is also a good test of the previous owner's commitment to the year-round planning and maintenance that attractive landscaping requires.

"A really good garden would look great this time of year," Graham says.

Other things to examine are the grading, stability of architectural features and health of trees on the property, all of which can be disguised when the plants are in their springtime glory.

Study the drainage patterns, Bradley says. Look for erosion, bare spots, low spots and puddles. Is water moving away from the foundation of the house or toward it?

Look closely at any retaining walls for signs that they might be undermined.

If you have any doubts about the health of a particular tree, call in an arborist for a professional evaluation. "You don't want to buy a house and get hit with $10,000 worth of tree removal fees," Bradley said.

You also don't want to decide on a house based on a tree's presence, only to lose it a few months later. That happened to a client of Graham's.

"These people loved this large oak in front of the house," he says. "It was one of the reasons they bought the place."

But once they moved in and began to clean up the leaf litter at the base of the tree, they discovered that the roots had been seriously damaged. "They wound up having to cut it down."