Our Front Yard Progress

We have been busy spending our spring weekends working on landscaping the front and back yard.  We love doing the work ourselves to save on the cost of labor.

 

As a reminder, this is what we started with.  This photo was taken before the house was painted gray, before the shutters and window boxes were added, before the front doors were painted red, and before the previous owner’s landscaping was torn out.  He didn’t want to mow, and we do want to mow lush green grass.  First we removed all but one of the big bushes right in front of the house.

 

 

Next up was to transplant the three decorative grass plants into our backyard to create some sort of oasis.  You can also see that we made some  progress with the ivy.

 

 

Then we removed all this ivy with weeds mixed in.  This was a project we did by hand.

 

 

I worked in sun and rain pulling the ivy.  We wanted to make sure we really got the roots.  Some we were able to dig up so that made things a little easier.

 

 

While I was busy with the ivy, Mr. Spring was organizing where we were to put our new plants.  He took a water hose to make a curved line so we could determine where the plants stop and the grass starts.

 

 

Mr. Spring then placed the plants where they were suggested by Erin from Escapes Garden Consulting who helped us come up with a plan.

 

 

After planting, we spread out newspapers before we put the mulch on top.  This is to help with weed control, and I have to say so far it is working pretty well.

 

 

While removing the overgrown ivy, we found tons of rocks that were some sort of path leading to the sidewalk.  We have a pretty steep hill and decided to remove all the rocks for now and decide later if we want to do a path.  This was another good workout though Mr. Spring did the majority of the moving.

 

 

Here you go.  What a beauty with all the ivy gone.  We decided we need a new retaining wall, but we are putting that off till most likely next year.  We are hoping to get these projects done in the spring so we can go out and spend our time hiking, kayaking and camping during the summer weekends.

 

 

Last year when we wanted grass in our backyard, we worked for months removing gravel that the previous owner had poured on the entire area.  After all of the work, we wanted instant gratification and had a professional install sod.  We were happy with it, but after talking to a grass guru in Syracuse, we learned seeding is the way to go.  We thought we would give it a shot and listen to his recommendations.  Here Mr. Spring is seeding away.

 

 

I bet the final step had our neighbors cringing.  The grass guru said put sheets over the grass seeds for about a week and water with the sheets on.  This helps the birds not get the seeds and keeps the seeds from not washing away.  (I don’t know why he didn’t suggest that we use straw).  We left the sheets on for about a week.  They are to be removed at the first sight of grass.  As of now we have  a little bit of grass coming up.  We can see it if we stand right by our yard, squat down, and peak.  We are thrilled, but unfortunately, it wasn’t really showing up in pictures.  I will be sure to do another update on the progress when I get home next week from a business trip.

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