Front Yard
When we purchased the house there was one kind of landscaping going on, over grown and unattended. To be fair, the owners were aging and didn’t have family close by to help out.
Before:
The hedge row between us and the neighbors was over grown, but there was no landscaping in front of the house except my most hated plant: Rose of Sharon.
Don’t ask me why I don’t like the plant, they flower, draw humming birds, and they are very hearty, I just don’t like them. So that plant was destine to go.
During
We pulled the Rose of Sharon and all of the other bushes growing along the house, out soon after we moved in, but didn’t do any landscaping out front, until we dug up the driveway.
The chimney that you see in the above picture was knocked down during a storm. We wanted to remove the chimney any way. A large tree that we wanted to take down eventually, blew over, hit the house, damaged the roof and took down the chimney for us.
When work was being done on the driveway, and they were removing dirt from the driveway area in order to add drainage pipe and stone, I had them put the good dirt in front of the house to build up the yard in front of the house and fill in some of the holes close to the house.
After that I raked and raked and picked lots of stones from the dirt until it was plantable soil. That first year we just threw mulch on the dirt to prevent erosion and and landscaped the following year.
After
We planted a pink flowering dogwood tree, 4 pink flowering azaleas, 4 heather bushes that flower pink in the winter, a bunch of cranes bill ground cover, 2 clumps of pink cone flowers, 2 white peonies, 2 clumps of black-eyed susans, and a variety of mums. The flowers are starting to really take hold, but I have to laugh when I look at the height of the cone flowers compared to the dogwood tree. They are almost as tall as the tree, it looks very silly.
The tulips I planted last season (2008) did not do very well this spring. It is their 3rd time being transplanted and it may have been to much for them. If I don’t get any flowers next year (2010) I’ll be pulling all of the bulbs and buying new.
Road Side
After I took out the light pole that was at the end of the drive way with John’s truck (oops), some trees were taken down in the neighbors yard, the mailbox moved and the driveway and widened I finally addressed the road side portion of our yard.
Before
I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do around the mailbox. I knew it had to be something hearty and I didn’t want to have to do a lot of maintenance on whatever plant I decided on. I also knew I didn’t want grass by the mailbox because what a pain to try and mow around.
During
Here you can see that the mailbox location has been moved over, in fact the whole mailbox, post and all is new. The driveway is in the process of being graded as well.
After
I planted black-eyed susans around the mailbox. They are hardy enough to handle all kinds of ‘road dirt’ and they are also capable of handling the multitude of dogs that mark this area, including our own.
In the second picture you can see that on the other corner of our yard I planted some tiger lilies (day lilies). Just past these flowers is our neighbor’s yard. They had 4 huge pine trees that really shaded this portion of the yard, grass wasn’t even really growing. PPL took the trees down and now there is plenty of sunshine for flowers. This is also a hard area of our yard to mow as it is on a hill, sharp turn and right by the road. The lilies fill in here and solve a problem for us.
The Secret Garden
Well I don’t know how much of a secret it is, but it is in a private part of our yard that is basically cutoff from the rest of the yard. It is nestled between our house and the hedge row between us and the neighbors. The dog run fence and two bushes and landscaping that we add at the front of the house further isolate this area from foot traffic. From the porch however you have a very nice view of the garden area.
Secret Garden before
Here is what the area looked like before. The pictures were taken from inside the dog run looking out.
At the far end of the pictures you can just see one of the bushes and part of the mulch bed that we added across the front of the house, boxing this area in from both sides. It was such a pain to mow the area too. I suggested that we just eliminate all the grass and turn it into a flower garden.
Construction
Unfortunately I did not take pictures during this time so I’ll just have to explain. This whole project took us a month worth of weekends to complete.
Well the first order of business was to get rid of all of the grass, so we sprayed the area with plant life killer to kill everything, weeds, grass, plants. After a week all of the plant life was dead. John borrowed the neighbor’s tiller to turn the soil. We spent the rest of the day just raking, and picking rocks. Talk about blisters and sore backs!
We did some eyeballing and brainstorming all week long to figured out a basic layout for the garden. Then we surveyed the yard for plants that were not in ideal spots that we could move into the area. OK we were to get started come the weekend.
To prevent erosion we decided to lay down mulch right away, even though I like to plant and then mulch. The next thing we did was laydown landscaping fabric where we wanted the stone pathway to travel and got it tacked down. We then laid the stone for the path. That took several trips to the landscaper, the cart could only hold so much stone. By now our backs are breaking.
The following weekend we went and bought plants. Periwinkle groundcover for the space between the path and the hedge row. Also a butterfly bush, some yarrow, and pansies for additional ground cover. I also bought one Alisters. I noticed there were some very wet areas that needed a special plant and I wanted to see if this type would work.
Finally in the home stretch, we spent the next week digging up plants from around the yard and transplanting them into the garden. We found ferns to plant next to the porch and lots of hastas for the shady areas. I also had some tiger lilies and I wanted to try them in the area along the house.
That was the first year.
This year (2009) I added a few more plants: a couple more Alisters, three Liropes around the cedar tree, Ivy to grow on the dog run fence, more yarrow, some daisies and beebalm that the neighbor gave me, more ground cover and some mountain fire bushes. The pansies are becoming their own ground cover and are popping up everywhere. I have one section reserved for annual flowers as well. The tiger lilies ended up not doing very well so I moved them out to the road side.
Next year I hope to add more daisies, more ground cover, and another Asiter or two and that will be it for the secret garden.
Everything is growing
I originally wanted to put stepping stones down, but everyone agrees that the stone path is a much better look for the area. We have since hung a bird feeder that I will start filling this fall. John also made me a bird bath out of part of a tree we cut down and a terra cotta saucer. I was tired of finding feathers in the dogs’ water bowls.
We have quite a bird sanctuary here and we weren’t even trying! Sparrows, Cardinals, Robins, Woodpeckers (not the woody woodpecker type) and others I can’t identify visit us regularly. Oh and let’s not forget the hummingbirds that visit the hasta flowers and the beebalm as well as the hummingbird feeders we hang.
Relaxing on the porch has become even more enjoyable!
