For the past two weekends I have been working really hard on our front garden. Our house is the only one on the court with no large mature tree on the front yard, I plan to change that over the next few years.
Phase one is softening the garden in front of the house, it was originally grass and a thick concrete retaining wall across the front window. I have removed the sod the best I could as I did need to call in Robs help a couple of times, filled it with new soil and planted a selection of (mostly) native perennials. Across the front of the concrete wall are a couple of Columbine and some Ladys Mantle. Next is a Diablo Ninebark bush followed by some lovely Japanese Forest grass, white Moss Phlox and lastly a couple of Stonecrop. I have one last plant that I am looking for, Prairie Smoke, for in front of the Ninebark. It has been a bit difficult to find but I havn't been looking too hard to be honest.
For the most part I have been quite determined to do this all on my own as I am finally feeling like I can do it after almost 2.5 years of not feeling like doing much of anything. Removing sod is brutal so that's when I have called in the big guns for some help. Rob has been a great help as well as Owen wanting to get right in there and dig with us. Every morning before school he has to run around the garden checking all the plants, making sure they survived the night.
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| Wherever you see dirt, it used to be grass |
I also added this little garden beside the trees. Eventually this entire area will become a kidney shaped garden full of perennials but that involves removing the old wood beds...major work. I'm not a fan of the evergreens but again it will be too much to try and remove them so instead they will be incorporated into the new bed and should fit in a bit nicer. Owen has been asking me if we can plant a rainbow (one of the books we read at night) so this year we filled it will Zinnias we had started from seed. We planted two Goatsbeard in the side garden and hopefully they will fill in the area nicely.
Lastly I planted some Rhubarb along the side of the house where it's just grass growing. My Mom shared some of her plant with me which had come from my Opas house so I am pretty excited about this one.
No pictures but I have been splitting and transplanting all of the hostas in the back to different parts of the garden and side. I have never done this before so am hopeful that it all takes!
I will post pictures in the next month or so once everything has started to fill in but for now I'm going to have a quick nap on the sofa and feel pretty proud of what I have accomplished so far.
