Transforming your yard from a winter wasteland into a stunning summer garden can feel like an insurmountable task. That's where a garden plan can help.

A garden plan is a scale drawing of your property from a bird's-eye perspective. Landscapers use garden plans to try out ideas and then achieve a design whose look and feel fits with the house and flows evenly across the entire property.

Landscaping that suits a home, fits tastefully into its surroundings and goes above and beyond the neighborhood’s standard can add as much as 12.7% to a property's value, according to several studies conducted over the years. A sophisticated design and big, mature plants are the biggest factors in increasing home value and selling prices, researchers found.

"It makes the house stand out and look like it's cared for and loved," says Jim Lapides, spokesman for the American Society of Landscape Architects.

At the minimum, in a stalled real-estate market, attractive landscaping helps move a sale, adding curb appeal to get buyers out of their cars and off their computers to look inside.