Most home sellers underestimate how quickly first impressions shape a buyer’s emotional response. In this episode of How to Sell Your Atlanta Home with Sage and Grace, Judy Jernigan sits down with licensed landscape architect and ServScape founder Mario Cambardella to unpack the psychology, strategy, and real market impact of curb appeal.
Whether you plan to sell soon or simply want to invest in upgrades that protect and grow your equity, Mario shares clear, actionable insights that help any homeowner create a welcoming exterior that homebuyers connect with before ever stepping inside.
• The emotional and psychological influence of curb appeal on homebuyers
• Small landscaping mistakes that weaken first impressions
• Fast, high impact curb appeal projects when you have limited time
• How to choose plants that match your home’s architecture and style
• Design strategies for minimizing visual liabilities
• Atlanta’s current landscaping trends and what to avoid
• Why fast growing plants can create long term maintenance challenges
• How planning ahead increases resale value and reduces prep stress
Homebuyers begin evaluating a property the moment they pull up to the curb. Landscaping communicates care, quality, and the lifestyle a home offers. A well designed exterior sets the tone for the entire showing experience and can raise perceived value before a buyer walks through the door.
Intentional curb appeal can lead to stronger offers, faster results, and a smoother sale. For anyone considering selling in the next few months or even years, planning ahead puts you at a clear advantage.
Mario Cambardella is the founder and CEO of ServeScape, Atlanta’s first online landscape marketplace. As a licensed landscape architect, entrepreneur, and former Director of Urban Agriculture for the City of Atlanta, Mario helps home sellers and homeowners elevate curb appeal through thoughtful design and locally sourced plants.
Website: servescape.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/servescape/
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Transcript
[Judy] First impressions can make or break your home sale. So how do you create curb appeal that stops home buyers in their tracks? Whether you're weeks from listing or just starting to plan ahead on the next episode of how to sell your Atlanta home with Sage and Grace, we will help you make smart choices that pay off. Selling a home isn't just about putting up a for sale sign. It's about strategy, marketing and negotiation. But how do you know if you're making the right moves? I'm Judy Jernigan, recognized among the top 5% by the Atlanta Realtors and your host of How to Sell Your Atlanta Home with Sage and Grace, smart homeowner strategies, successful real estate sales. With a background in broadcasting, negotiation and education, I bring a unique perspective to home sales, helping homeowners sell faster for top dollar and with less hassle while understanding not just the financial side, but also the logistical and emotional considerations of a move. This show helps you plan ahead, navigate the market and work more effectively with a realtor like me. You'll get expert insights from my guests, plus real actionable strategies to sell with confidence. Now here's the show, moving you forward with Sage advice and grace. We're talking curb appeal, what actually makes your home pop from the sidewalk to the front door. From simple refreshes to full landscape makeovers, the right choices can lead to faster, stronger offers. My guest today knows how to turn plain yards into outdoor spaces that stand out to serious home buyers. Mario Camberdella is the founder and CEO of ServScape, Atlanta's premier online landscape marketplace, connecting homeowners with high quality plants and expert design services. He's a licensed landscape architect, a certified arborist and served as the city of Atlanta's first director of urban agriculture. Mario's mission is to make great landscape design more accessible and to show how outdoor spaces can boost both your home's value and your quality of life. Thank you for joining us. [Mario] My pleasure. [Judy] So if someone is thinking about selling their home, maybe in a few weeks, maybe in a year or two, why is curb appeal so important, do you think? [Mario] Well, I think the curb appeal is almost like at a culinary restaurant. You have this beautiful meal that the chef prepared, that's the house, but what does it put on? What's the plate? And so the plate needs to be reflective of the care and attention that that meal had. So in this instance, the builder came in, did kind of a standard fare, a standard plate, but let's like dress it to the prominence of the home. And let's make that home feel a little bit more homey, a little bit more nestled into that landscape. And I believe, and I think the data would suggest that it increases the value of the home. [Judy] Oh, definitely. [Mario] And this house in particular definitely stands out in that way. [Judy] Yes, you've done a great job here. So we will walk around and talk about this home in particular, but before we get to that, do you feel like there is a psychology involved when it comes to outdoors, green spaces? Like how does it impact people emotionally? [Mario] I think that people are emotionally drawn to nature. I think for a variety of reasons. One, it could be the beauty aspects, something interesting. I want to learn. Nature is one of the most complex systems around us and there's intrigue there. So when you see things like flower and beautification, you want to know what they are. And then as soon as you get the name and how it might contribute to maybe a pollinator or to a particular bird or butterfly, then you feel the interconnectedness of the landscape with the world around us. That poses knowledge to everyone around it. And when have that knowledge is power and you feel more empowered to be an advocate for more beautiful and resilient things in nature around us. So it perpetuates itself once we acknowledge that there's something beauty and mysterious about nature and then we welcome that into our homes, into our lives and into our landscape. [Judy] So tell us about this home. You know the person who lives here and she's planning ahead? [Mario] She's planning ahead. And so she was looking at her options for going in retirement living in the future. She wants a couple years, but she wants to start thinking about increasing the value of her home. Now the interiors were already done by a builder just two years ago. So the opportunity is really changing a builder grade landscape to just a few foundation shrubs to a more established and meaningful asset-based landscape plan. So we came out. She purchased an on-site consultation. We went over the scope, understood what she wanted, then rolled that into a landscape plan, which I'm holding in my hand. And then we just, then she said, okay, I see all the plants you're going to add. I see the installation. I want to say, let's go. And just within a few days, I think it was about a week, she had this all installed. [Judy] Wow. Ideal client. So if you are listening to us on your favorite podcast platform, consider searching for how to sell your Atlanta home with Sage and Grace on YouTube so that you can see the visuals. But so what do you have here? [Mario] So what we wanted to do is we wanted to look at how we can architecturally put some elements in the landscape. Some of these plants are tall and columnar and they respond to the columns of the architecture. And so that increases the value of the structure. [Judy] So we're echoing. So the home has one, two, three, six columns across the front porch, which is nice, big, deep. Is that flagstone? [Mario] Yes. [Judy] So you're echoing, is that what you're saying? The columns with the column, skinny shrubbery. [Mario] The tall, skinny, the columnar arborvitaes are kind of bookending the home. And then these steed hollies that are about two and a half, three feet tall are responding to the existing columns. And that creates that sense of entry and welcoming. The other key feature is we put a stone edger. The community has steel edger, which is a little bit degraded material. And the stone is a little bit more elevated. So we elevated the edger, separates the planting area from the sod and lawn area. And that creates a very nice, when we're using stone, this material that's never going to really degrade, it's going to have longstanding value. Even the patina adds more value to it. It only increases its value over time. [Judy] So this looks beautiful today, and it's going to have a year or two to establish before she even is trying to sell her home. What were some considerations you did when you are planning that far ahead? [Mario] When we look at landscapes, we like to say that first, the first year it sleeps, the second year it creeps, and the third year it leaps. So you really want a position for that third year. And that enables you to not have to buy the biggest material and keeps your budget in check, and enables you to kind of expand to more variety of plants without spending, blowing the budget on too big of material. So if you plan a little bit ahead, then you're able to enjoy it more, enjoy this brand new, this nice new landscape, watch it grow, and then hopefully one day add a significant value, at least comparatively in your neighborhood, and then let it go. Give it somebody else to... [Judy] So if a move may be in your future in a year or two or three, go ahead and call me, go ahead and call Mario. It's never too early to start planning ahead. [Mario] That's right. [Judy] Right. But on the flip side, if someone only has a shorter period of time to get their home ready, and they know that curb appeal is important, what suggestions do you have for them? [Mario] Surfscape has the ability to help with the design, and it's always good to start a design. Poor investment would be not knowing the right type of plant for the right place. You know you right plant for the right place. But starting with... We have a lot of design concepts, generation AI design concepts, concept visions, and that at least gets you going. And then you can... And think also time of year. So we don't want to do anything too much in the summer, but spring and fall, even winter are great times to move forward. But if you have very limited time, I always look at how can I take your greatest visual liability and turn that into an asset, thereby elevating the whole as quickly as possible. So if you need to hide a trash can, that's maybe where you need to spend a little bit more money. Or you need to really kind of look at the front door. It's not the most beautiful front entrance. That's where you need to start spending some flowers and pots and stuff like that. So looking at greatest liability, do an inventory scan, and then identify, and then put the concentrated dollars into specific areas. And that's how you can make the most impact the shortest amount of time. [Judy] When people first pull up to a home, I mean, everyone knows first impressions are super, super important. Something they don't always think about is usually we go in the front door, and the real estate professional is there fiddling with a lockbox that always takes a minute or two to get it open. So the potential home buyer is standing there on the front porch, looking at that front area, the front landscaping, just the front curve appeal. So making sure, like you said, that we have made it just as pretty and welcoming as possible is just so more important than people realize. Do you want to walk around a little more and show us what you've done here? [Mario] Yeah, for sure. So again, a lot of this is going to be the owner's choice. So hydrangeas, azaleas, ferns, hollies. We really wanted to play up the southern style garden. This is definitely southern living meets garden and gun dropped in a landscape. So we want to kind of use a lot of traditional things. But here is a very good example of a very innovative plant that just came out last year. It's called the Eclipse hydrangea. So we put some more contemporary elements, but that you would see in a traditional garden. So some new varieties. And then with all my customers, I always give a gifty plant. So just something that, you know, the little potted plant so that we can kind of just, again, celebrate the fact that we did something special together. [Judy] So we are in Atlanta, Georgia, where Servescape is based. What are some of the trends you're seeing? Does landscape go through trends exterior, like we have on the inside? [Mario] Absolutely. One of the biggest trends is the modern, like English or cottage style garden. And so that's where we're starting to see a lot of variety. And so this is not that. This is a little bit more southern style with a few contemporary elements, but cottage style gardens or English style contemporary cottage garden is definitely going to have a lot more of the perennials, have a lot more of the native grasses, and then combining those with maybe a few succulents and some stones and putting them. It looks like a little random or chaotic, but you can have this very complex patterns to make it all kind of look like a chorus of color and textures. [Judy] I love the English cottage. I did not know they were trendy. I'm not usually very trendy, so how about that for once I'm on trend? [Mario] Well, you know, my house is in this community and I'd love to show you what my little cottage garden that I'm growing over here. [Judy] Let's go look at it. Let's look up there. [Mario] So this is kind of that cottage garden feel where we have all different perennials and they're playing with a lot of blue green textures here and pinks. So they're staying very, very, very, very simple with the colors in terms of the bloom color to allow the foliage to be really the star of any kind of garden. So this is a yarrow, snapdragon, dusty miller. This is another type of dusty miller. This is one of my favorite plants called palace castle or artemesia, and this is like the dwarf version, and they have creeping thyme, and we have a few succulents kind of smattered throughout here, but and then we have these tall Italian cypress. Now one of the key elements you have to have in any kind of cottage garden is a grass element. So this is Mexican feather grass here, and this is pink muley. So this will be pink throughout late summer and fall, and those are, and then one of my favorite plants right here is called sedum autumn joy, and those will bloom in the autumn and autumn. So trying to get, you know, three cycles of blooms out of this one tiny little what I call English cottage style garden. [Judy] It's so cheerful, such a pretty little happy space. [Mario] Yeah. [Judy] How important is low maintenance? Is that something that people request a lot, low maintenance? [Mario] You know, yes, everybody wants low maintenance, but what's a misnomer is people want low maintenance and fast growing, and those are competing elements or competing qualities in a garden. If it's fast growing, you typically need to maintain it more. [Judy] Water it, feed it. [Mario] Right, and so people ask me like, why is some of the slow growing or the dwarf material so much more expensive? It's because the maintenance is less, and so if you want low maintenance, go for slow growing, and then high maintenance, fast growing. At Surfscape, we, every one of these plants, we ID on a 30-point attribute tag. So it could be to the color, to the style of garden, the theme, or its purpose, and that could be pollinating, and pollinating for what? It could be welcoming bats, it could be preventing deer, it could be welcoming butterflies or particular bees, and we group these into curated collections. So you can go with the purpose that you want to. You want to bring on a specific butterfly, maybe monarch butterfly, and you have the tools at Surfscape, so you can say, give me the plants that focus on a particular bird or monarch butterfly, and it'll list out all the plants for that end. [Judy] So we've been talking with Mario Cambargella with Surfscape. Tell folks a little bit more about your website. [Mario] Surfscape.com is what we believe, when you walk outside and you want to make something happen, we want Surfscape to be that delivery service and those resources. So whether it's the plants, all the plants that's grown locally within the southeast, or the services, landscape design and installation, we believe that Surfscape can be that delivery agent for a beautiful and resilient landscape. [Judy] You help a lot of homeowners, when they're getting ready to sell their homes, boost their curb appeal. Any final thoughts or tips on ways to do that? [Mario] Concentrate on the bookends, sort of bookending the house. Responding to the architecture of the house is a great place to start. And then also first impressions, that doorway, that entrance, and then any key specific visual liabilities. So those are my three kind of things. Respond to the architecture, address the front door, and really hide those visual liabilities. And also, you always want to hide that visual liability closest to it. Some people like to be too far away from masking. Sometimes you really can guide the eye with some plant material to what you want them to see. [Judy] Tell us again, where can we find you? [Mario] We're at Surfscape.com 24-7. You can order in the middle of the night, on Sunday afternoon, we're always open. Surfscape.com. I'm Mario at Surfscape and we have open door policy. So we're happy to talk with anybody about how they want to grow a beautiful and resilient landscape. [Judy] Thank you for doing this. [Mario] My pleasure. [Judy] Curb appeal really can make or break a sale. First impressions matter more than most homeowners realize. Whether it's a simple refresh or a full-on landscape overhaul, small changes outside your home can lead to big wins when it hits the market. Huge thanks to Mario Camberdella for sharing his expertise today. If you're thinking about selling your Atlanta area home, or even if you're just planning ahead, now's the time to start thinking beyond the front door. Visit sageandgracere.com for more home selling resources, free guides, and to schedule a chat with me. And don't forget to check out past episodes on staging, pre-listing inspections, title insurance, and more. Until next time, I'm your host and your realtor for life, Judy Jernigan. We appreciate your company. Thanks for joining us on how to sell your Atlanta home with Sage and Grace. I'm Judy Jernigan and I love helping homeowners sell smarter with less stress and better results. Who do you know with real estate questions? Please connect us so we can make confident, well-informed decisions and get the best possible outcomes together. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like, subscribe, and leave a five-star review. It helps more homeowners get the smart strategies they need for a successful sale. Head to sageandgracere.com to learn more about working with me and the Sage and Grace real estate team, explore all our show episodes, and when you're ready, book a chat directly with me, Judy Jernigan, moving you forward with Sage Advice and Grace.