Front Yard Phase One Complete! Kinda.

A few years ago there were some ugly, overgrown, starting-to-die bushes in the front of my home. This was before I was married, or even engaged. Being the smart single gal I was (Not that I'm not still smart, just no longer single.), I had my dad pull them out.

To make a long story short, he cut them down, but left me to dig them up. Yeah, right. Like that was going to happen. Fast forward a few years, and I'm itching to remove the stumps. I'm embarrassed to come home from my morning run to this:

A few weekends ago, Husband and I (but a little more Husband than me) pulled out this stumps! You can read all about it here - complete with directions and advice if you're ready to rip yours out too. It looked waaaaay better, but still very incomplete.




This weekend, we can finally call phase one of this project complete! It only took 2 trips to Menards, 1 trip to Home Depot, 10 bags of top soil, 10 bags of mulch, a few hours, and a little bit of muscle. Okay, maybe a little too much muscle was involved. Husband did manage to break the metal rake in half. But we now get to come home to this:

Lovely! Lets take a closer look at those garden beds shall we?

My what large/long hips you have!

I picked out Plantain Lily Hostas and Petunias. I kill basically everything I plant so I went with hardy plants that didn't need a ton of maintenance. 

The hostas are best suited for partial sun, so we'll see how those do in our yard that gets a lot of intense afternoon sun. I hear that the worst that would happen is the leave will turn brown, and if that's the case, I'll just replant them in the backyard later. My neighbors all have hostas that look great, so I'm crossing my fingers for these guys. 

Petunias are just really hard to kill. I've had them growing in my backyard (we live near Chicago) in December in previous years. I made sure to get them in a fun bright color.

We also decided to go with black mulch. I love how the plants pop against the dark mulch. From a distance it almost looks like we have perpetually perfect soil. 

How about a before and after? (Sorry these aren't fancier, getting used to a new computer...)

Before:

After:

We still have a ways to go in the front yard. We're hoping to:

• Kill the ants in the yard
• Kill the weeds in the lawn
• Dig up three more bushes in the far front corner of the yard (Phase 2)
• Reseed the lawn (In the fall)
• Build up the garden beds with paver stones (Phase 2)
• Plant a tree (This year, if I can convince Husband)
• Add additional garden beds around the tree, outlined in pavers (Phase 2)
• Paint the house! (Phase 2, or maybe 3?)

And as you can see, we still need to carry this front yard makeover to the side gardens, and eventually to the backyard. Our goal is to have the entire yard tie together as simply and low maintenance as possible. As we have the funds and free time to clean up more of the yard, I'll be back with more updates. 

Do you have any outside projects going on?