When the summer shine wears off, don't give up on your curb appeal. You don't have to let your Cleveland landscaping disintegrate just because your summer blossoms dry up and the leaves begin to fall. In fact, fall is an excellent time to enhance your home's curb appeal. Take advantage of fall's beautiful changes and colors by updating your home's exterior.

The following tips can help you transition your home's curb appeal from summer to fall. Not only do these tips keep your home looking well kept and professional, but they also help you to maintain your home's landscaping and to prepare it for next summer.

• Add fall color. Your bright pink, yellow, and purple flowers may be a pleasant summer memory now, but that doesn't mean you have to resign yourself to drab colors. Instead, plant some cooler-weather flowers that thrive in fall weather and still provide some beautiful color. Mums, pansies, and violas do well in Cleveland landscaping designs, and they come in an assortment of colors. Beautiful fall flowers ease the transition to cooler weather and improve the look of your landscaping.
• Decorate your home. Help Mother Nature out by adding a few decorations of your own. Set a trio of shapely pumpkins on your front steps, hang a fiery fall wreath on your front door, or plant a pair of matching fall-colored mums on either side of your porch. For decorative ideas, visit a local home improvement store or flip through the pages of home design magazines. You may also find decoration inspiration in nurseries or catalogs.
• Keep your yard clean. As the wind picks up and blows leaves and other debris to the ground, yards can take on a messy, unkempt appearance. Step up your landscaping efforts by keeping your lawn free of leaves and fallen twigs. There are a couple of ways to go about this task. You can rake and bag your leaves, or you can mulch them with your mower. We find that mulching them with the lawnmower accomplishes several tasks at once. First, it cleans up your yard. Second, it breaks down leaves into precious nutrients that feed your lawn. Third, it reduces landfill waste, even if that landfill waste is highly compostable. It's also much easier and less time consuming than raking and bagging your leaves.
• Clean your rain gutters. Leaf-filled rain gutters look sloppy. They disrupt the architectural lines of your home. Worse, however, the solid waste in your gutters blocks water flow during storms. Water then drips down on your house and foundation where it shouldn't be. This out-of-place water can weaken your foundation, and cause other structural problems. At the very least, your rain gutters become weighed down and worn out before their time. Make an autumn ritual of getting up on the roof and thoroughly cleaning out your gutters after the leaves have fallen.
• Freshen your mulch. If your mulch has dried out or become sparse over the summer, now is a great time to freshen it up. Buy the same kind of mulch you've used in the past, and rake it in to mix the old with the new. If you plant any flower bulbs during the fall--a great idea when thinking ahead to your spring curb appeal--make sure you add mulch to the area where you plant your bulbs. The fresh mulch will protect the bulbs from the hard winter freeze.