Dreams of a Beautiful Landscape

Before we moved into our house, I lived with a friend that lives only about a mile away from our neighborhood.  I would actually run by our house since we had a few months from when we bought the house until we closed on it.  I would call Greg after my run and tell him how beautiful the house was and how all the flowers are starting to bloom and we have a gorgeous flowering tree in the front yard.  The grass looked pristine at the time.

We got married the summer we moved in, and if you can remember Summer 2011 was extremely hot just as this summer was.  The week we were gone for our wedding and honeymoon, temperatures were in the 100's, so our grass all died; but, let's be honest, we have never watered a day in our life until recently.  The last time I can remember watering a yard or plants was when I was a child when my mom made me.  I didn't like it then, and I certainly do not like it now.

Too much time has gone by with us neglecting our yard.  Practically our entire street has nice developed landscaping and sprinkler systems to water them, and our yard just keeps getting more clumps of crab grass and "milk" weeds spreading throughout.  I can honestly say I'm embarrassed, and it's time for a change.

I've done a good amount of research on plants in the area and what type of plants do well in our zone, but bottom line, the beds have to be low maintenance.  There are several websites, such as Better Homes & Garden, that will give you a landscaping design for your zone, so I used a lot of these websites to find a design that I liked.  I also had a hard time deciding between hearty bushes and some color from flowering plants.  I like to think that we ended up somewhere in the middle.  I saved several types of plants on my computer that I wanted to look into.  Greg just wanted me to have a plan since he thinks I just wing everything, so I convinced him to start by visiting a Nursery, and then I could see the plants that I was thinking of, and then group them together as I thought looked good.  It was a total plan!; however, when we were at the Nursery,  I couldn't find any of the strange names that I was looking for.  We did take some pictures of bushes that did well in the sun, and we decided to skip the perrenials until the spring. 

We also bought metal edging to separate the beds from the lawn.

What we did end up buying was 3.5 cubic yards of top soil that we were going to have them deliver to our house.  One of the websites that I visited said to elevate your flower beds so they stand above the grass.  I really liked the way this looked, so we needed some dirt to fill them in.  The woman at the Nursery helped us do the calculations, but we ended up with a lot more dirt than expected, so we were able to use it all around the yard to fill in our post holes from the fence and other low spots in the yard.

That evening, I decided to draw up a plan in order to give Greg some assurance that I had a plan for the front yard.  I broke out the old markers from my architecture classes and made it look pretty.  Needless to say, Greg approved of the plan and suggested that we purchase the plants on Monday so we could plant them as we were filling in the beds with our top soil.

So, I'm sure you haven't forgotten about our beautiful flowering tree in the front yard that is no longer in the plan.  The problem with the tree is that the roots were so shallow and the wind blows too hard around here, so the tree always leaned to one side.  Our friends suggested that we list the tree on Craigslist so that others could have it and dig it up for us.  Not a bad idea, but I just wasn't ready to get rid of it, so we moved it to the backyard!  There were also some other bushes in the front that are barely surviving from lack of water that we moved to the back as well.  The tree isn't so pretty anymore from the shock of relocating it, but hopefully it will come back next year.

Please ignore all of the dirt piles.  Those will eventuallty get moved.

As Greg was digging holes for the bushes along the sidewalk, he was realizing that the flowering tree's roots were so shallow because it was planted on top of concrete and rocks, as if the builder was really sloppy with his work when he poured the sidewalk and driveway.  Greg thinks he got the holes wide enough for our bushes to grow, so hopefully we won't have the same problem.

These are supposed to grow to 2'x2'.

These boxwoods are supposed to grow to 4'x4'.

If you're still reading to this point, then I'm sorry this post is so long.  I could go on forever about the crab grass and how we are pulling it all up by hand.  We have filled in all the dips in our yard, and have planted fescue grass seed.  We are slowly getting the hang of watering and being patient waiting for the grass seed to grow. 

Look for future updates on our progress in the yard.  Greg is slowly designing a sprinkler system, we will plant more ornamental grasses and flowers in the spring, and hopefully be able to fill the beds with rock.  We are also very excited about planting a garden if we can get the sprinkler system in.  Let's not get too ahead of ourselves and think we can actually water a garden everyday by ourselves.