Some Silicon Valley homeowners spruce up their yards and gardens in spring and summer with tanbark or mulch. While this is a very common practice, it can be a bad idea if too close to the home’s foundation. Tanbark is simply small bits of wood, and mulch is often no more than shredded wood (sometimes it’s peat moss). Why is that bad?  Wood is the food for termites and piles of tanbark or mulch can hide them as well!

If you have tanbark or wood mulch close to your house now, it’s suggested that you scrape it back away from the house a foot or so. (Check for the mud tubes when you do so.) Otherwise you are inviting subterranean termites to have a feast!

Ask your landscape expert what you might use in lieu of these products in your garden.  Perhaps a peat moss or mushroom mulch, pavers, clean compost topsoil or river rocks can clean up the area closest to your house in stead.

Last weekend my family and I took a visiting relative to see some sights in the area, including to Filoli in Woodside.  If you have never visited this grand & gracious estate on the peninsula, it’s something to put on your “must see” list.

The house is 36,000 square feet (thirty six thousand sq. ft.!), ten times larger than a “big” home. The house sits upon approximatey 650 acres, most of it in its natural state but more than a dozen acres beautifully landscaped with lawns, flowers, roses, bushes, trees, ponds and a pool. 

Please enjoy some photos of our time at Filoli last weekend.  Some of these were taken by me, but most were shot by my daughter, Clair Handy (used by permission, of course!).

The Filoli Center is located at 86 Cañada Road Woodside, CA 94062

Filoli is open Tuesday through Sunday for self-guided tours (docent led tours are Tues through Saturday).  All donations, admissions, membership etc. go to preserving Filoli Center. For more information, please visit the Filoli website: http://www.filoli.org/

The Garden Conservancy hosts annual garden tours throughout the US, including here in Silicon Valley.  Tomorrow there will be a (self-guided) tour in Saratoga, Los Gatos and Monte Sereno featuring the beautiful landscaping of four homes plus an Italianate Garden at Villa Montalvo, also in Saratoga.

Tickets cost  $5 per garden per person (kids under 12 are free).  Or, become a member of the Garden Conservancy and enjoy discounted ticket prices. They also offer a directory, which can be purchased, of all the tours nationwide.  Great idea fodder!

If you want to sell your Silicon Valley home, you need a good amount of qualified traffic coming through your doors. That is, you want people who really do want to buy a home and who are capable of doing so to have a look at your condo, townhome or house inside as well as out.  Should the photos in the MLS and online be non-existent, scarce, or poor, those buyers may reject your home without ever seeing it.  It is imperative that your home’s photos nicely showcase your property so that buyers want to come and see more in person. 

In this post I’ll share a few tips on how to make the front of  your home show well for the photos (and for in-person visits of real estate agents and home buyers), a few things to do or not to do.  This will help you even if someone else is in charge of taking the photos – you can propertly set the stage before the photographer ever gets there.

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