Landscaping Past to Present

In a previous post of mine, I commented on the fact that our next landscaping project was going to be the front of house under our large ash tree. This area is overgrown with plants that just don't work under the shade of the large tree. The juniper bush, that currently hides the power boxes, is half dead. The rock in the bed is full of leaves and sticks, about 23 years worth, which makes it next to impossible to clean them all out. Basically, the area is a site to be seen....and not in a good way.

This is not our first landscaping project. Many of you might have read the blog about the garden we put it. Here's a picture of how it is doing this year. Mostly everything is growing at great speed, except for the peas. We can thank the rabbits for almost wiping them out this year.

In addition to the garden last year, we tackled another ugly area of the preexisting landscaping, the front walk of the house. It reminds me so much of the front landscaping around the power boxes: overgrown, ugly juniper (I loathe them!) and rocks that haven't been cleaned for 23 years.

Here is what the landscaping was like before:
I removed all the junipers, which is a pretty tough task. You first have to cut all the branches off and then cut as many parts of the stump as you can. Pulling it out of the ground is the worst! It took me all day to do one stump. I attacked it with an ax, a saw, a shovel...really anything I could find. The next day, my manly husband came out and with the right positioning of the shovel and his body weight he was able to pop the other two out in about 2 hours.

My wonderful husband also built a nice stone edging around the landscaping. The corner was the hardest part and required much patience on his part to get the cuts just right. We have caught several neighbors walking up and taking a closer look.

We filled the bed with wood chips instead of rock this time. The wood chips camouflage all the leaves and sticks pretty well. In the space where the junipers were, I replaced it with salvia and daylilies. I am hoping they will spread more over the coming years and the bed will be filled with flowers.

I have pictures of the remodel below. It is not what I want it to be quite yet. We had a storm a couple of days ago and it seemed to damage the purple tree in the background and a couple branches look broken. In late fall, I plan to get out there and cut down the burning bushes a good 1 1/2 feet and cut the purple tree down a 3 feet. They are very overgrown, but I waiting too long this year to get all the trimming done. You have to trim up all these plants before they start budding.


Well, that officially was our second landscaping project. It is not completely how I would like it to look, but I think we can all agree the new stuff looks way better than the old.

I am looking forward in the next couple of weeks starting on the landscaping around the power boxes. Luci is drawing me up some landscaping plans. She really is quite the expert on picking out plants and laying them out so they all coordinate well. I will write more about the plans when they are finalized.

~Beth