Experienced home swappers know the importance of including a full description of their home in their exchange offer, along with good quality up-to-date photos showing interior and exterior views. This enables people searching for a home swap holiday to really get a good feel for your home and your housekeeping style.
Gardens, for those lucky enough to have them, may not seem as important as the facilities inside your house or apartment, but when adding your property to a home exchange travel website such as Home Base Holidays (www.homebase-hols.com), make sure to include a good description of any outside space you have. Include whether it’s suitable for families with young children, and if you have garden furniture, a BBQ, a swimming pool, outside toys – anything that would be attractive to your guests. Having a quiet place to relax after a busy day of sightseeing on a hot summer’s day is such a plus and time spent in your garden could well be a highlight of the holiday for city dwellers with no gardens.
Gardens, just like homes, come in all shapes and sizes, with styles unique to the owners (part of the fun of home swapping is trying out a lifestyle different to your own!). Some homes can look like something from a fancy interior design magazine, while at the opposite end, there are homes that might look rather cluttered and dated. However, the vast majority of home swap offers are somewhere in between - they're simply nice, normal, tidy homes that are lived in rather than sterile show rooms. Gardens are the same, some might have the keenest gardeners keeping them pristine, with not a single weed allowed to spoil a perfect lawn or flower bed. Other gardens may have a patchy bit of grass with evidence of many football games and fun, or with overgrown bushes and trees blocking the sun.
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Encouraging wildlife friendly wild flowers With everyone more aware of environmental issues and cost of living concerns, many of us are changing the way we use our gardens, from ditching chemicals, using peat-free compost, and growing more vegetables and fruit. One of the major shifts is in choosing wildlife, especially pollinator, friendly plants (many of which we used to see as weeds!). Traditionally, keen gardeners liked to get their lawn looking neat and trimmed with an early cut. However No Mow May, promoted by Plantlife (www.plantlife.org.uk) in the UK and other organisations worldwide, encourages leaving some grassy areas to grow until the end of May to give early wild flowers a chance to bloom. Therefore, you might want to resist the temptation to pull up those dandelions and leave them for the bees and butterflies! That scruffy patch of bedding may not look much in spring but, after a few weeks of warmer weather, it could turn into a glorious wild flower meadow and a haven for wildlife. |
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Arrange a home swap holiday through Home Base Holidays Sign up to Home Base Holidays and start home swapping. Whether you're planning a staycation or thinking about a trip abroad, you'll find lots of tempting holiday offers (including country cottages, city apartment, houseboats and homes by the sea). |
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