Boost your home's value

Payback: Varies; a recent study shows that good landscaping adds 5% to 11% to a home's value

Cost: Varies widely

When it makes sense: Your home isn't as landscaped as others in your neighborhood, or your yard looks unkempt or just uninteresting.

Best way to do it: Hire a landscaper that has in-house designers or landscape architects on staff. For a small fee (about $100 to $250), many will walk your property and recommend plantings and placement. (If you want a drawn plan, you'll pay more.) Prefer to go it alone? At the garden center, resist the temptation to buy a little of everything. For greater impact, select a lot of just a few kinds of plants, advises Rebecca Cole, a landscape designer in New York City.

Caveat: Don't tear all your existing plantings out. Keeping some mature ones will make your yard look more established.

Cost-saving move: Rather than buying new items, just prune the plants you have now and get rid of the dead stuff. "If you have 50 fabulous shrubs and one that's brown, that's the first thing everyone sees," Cole says.

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