If you would like to add color and personality to your home without drawing too much attention from the homeowner association, here are some approaches you can take:
Shrubs with Colorful Blooms
Planting shrubs will not only enhance the curb appeal of your home, it is also a subtle way to add color to your home exterior. Hydrangeas are hardy plants that produce lovely pink, blue, or white blooms several months out of the year. Some people with green thumbs can actually change the color of hydrangeas from pink to blue and back by adjusting the pH of the soil in which they are planted. Azaleas are another sort of hardy green shrub, and they bloom red, white, or pink once a year, usually starting in early March. Azaleas can also be shaped into a hedge to border your lot. Hibiscus, widely cultivated in southern Florida, can be grown in Jacksonville and produces large, red flowers throughout the warmer months.
Hardscapes
Using red brick, red brick pavers, or a concrete stencil with colored pigment added to the mixture can offer a change from the dreary, gray concrete driveways and sidewalks to which you are accustomed. Another way to add color is through the use of dyes or acrylic paints to restain your driveway if it has seen better days. Concrete can be tinted to any number of shades to coordinate with your existing home exterior color.
Mulch your shrub or flower beds with cypress mulch that has been tinted with a red pigment to retain the color longer. Also available is colored rubber mulch that will keep weeds and grass at bay longer than organic material.
Stones of varying shapes, sizes, and colors can be used to dress up unused areas, such as outside corners of garages or nooks around the exterior of the home where grass maintenance is problematic. You can use pea-size gravel in tans or whites or red lava rocks the size of your hand.
Hanging Baskets, Bird Feeders, and Wind Chimes
For your back yard, try some hanging baskets with bright flowers. If you do not have anywhere to hang the basket, home improvement stores have metal poles designed for just that purpose. Press the end into the ground and you have an instant hanging area.
Bird feeders will attract a wide variety of birds with vibrant colors. One of the most popular is the cardinal with bright red plumage. In heavily wooded areas, you could attract the painted bunting, a unique, perching bird that varies in color from blue to green with splashes of red. Spring will bring the bluebirds and, in surrounding trees, red capped woodpeckers.
Wind chimes are whimsical additions and can come in any shape, size, or color imaginable. If you have the time, consider making one of your own with some colored glass and fishing line.
When you add color to your home, you are dressing it up, and this can be done without the hassle of painting the entire house. Start with things you can handle on your own over the weekend to add accents of color around your home.
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