Fall Landscaping Spruce-up

We had a change of plans for the weekend.  I was supposed to finish my curtains for the family room, but the weather was just so gorgeous that I needed to be outside.  So we decided to make some updates to our landscaping.

My friend from work is a hard-core gardener and she recently gave me a bunch of iris plants so we decided to make use of them in a new bed on the side of our house.  We also added two rose bushes to this bed.  It looks pretty empty now, but I want to wait until the irises bloom in the spring to see what, if anything, we need to add to it.

The bed is a bit of a mess... we still have some cleaning up to do, but we were both too tired.

With all of the digging we did, we found a lot of rocks, which we are using to keep our mulch in place along the bed at the front of our house.  We got the idea from Our Home From Scratch.  I know a lot of us new home owners have a ton of rocks in the yard, so if you have the ambition to go around and pick them up, this is a functional and pretty way to put them to use.

We also got some mums and pumpkins for the front stoop and moved our planters to either side of the garage.  Our potato vine in those planters went crazy this summer.

And last but not least, we planted our first tree!  (It's actually our second tree, but we're not going to mention what happened to the first one.  Let's just say we hope this one has a better fate than that one did!).

It's a cherry tree, and the spot we chose is a bit sentimental to me.  My parents' house growing up had a cherry tree next to the driveway and it always made me so happy pulling up to the house when the flowers were blooming in the spring. 

I'm hoping we can plant one or two more trees this fall.  It's so bare around here!

Oh, one more thing... if you don't have a burning bush, you should get one.  The nursery dude wasn't kidding when he said it turns bright red in the fall.  It looks so cool!  It's my favorite plant we have so far.

Anyone else doing any landscaping updates?  I need ideas so I'd love to see what other people are doing.

Landscaping Upgrades

Greg and I took off from work last Friday (Greg's birthday!!) to do some landscaping.  Greg's mom came over and helped us too.  We went to a local nursery and picked up 3 leyland cypresses, one burning bush, one "fluffy evergreen" (that's a technical term), four bushes for the side of the house and an oak tree for the back yard.  We still have a long way to go, but even just these small upgrades made a big difference.

Before:


Before

 After:


After

We still need to plant some flowers and lay some fresh mulch, but I think we made good progress!  Just filling out some of the empty spaces and adding some different height bushes makes it look more interesting.  Next we want to do a big landscaped peninsula with a paver retaining wall on the right side of the house and an island with some more landscaping next to the driveway.  We are holding off on doing anything near the street until we find out what the deal is with the 10+ street trees we are supposed to be getting (long story :/).

Big thanks to my MIL for all of her help... we really put her to work!

 

Greg and Mom on his Birthday!

Happy Birthday Gregory!!!