Tag: xeric

Some pictures from cleaning up the lower garden. This is our front yard on the other side of the driveway. The pictures are from a week ago.

When we bought the house we didn’t actually know we had this lovely area. It wasn’t until we were enjoying our yard one of the first nights we moved in and wandering around that we noticed the steps and went down. There were vines strangling almost everything. When I trimmed down a nandina and pulled all the vines out of it I noticed there’s a lovely live oak on my neighbors property shading the area. I put the decomposed granite down there when we did the rest of the front yard, and it’s actually killed most of the vines since their root system was under the grassy patch in the middle and the visible parts coming up in the flower bed.
My work at making sure there’s not too much leafy buildup has really led to a increase in blooming irisis this year. But there used to be a ton of mondo grass that I let die in last years drought. I couldn’t justify using the water to keep it alive. Not sure what I’ll replace it with yet.

Man, still going with the weeding. It’s a pain, but the end is in sight. Hopefully by the end of next week. I decided that with the weather we’ve been having now would be an ok time to put in a tree, so I added the persimmon tree you see in the photo. I like it because it will provide berries and fruit.

So I figured I should update with where the yard is right now. I got my incentive check from the city and the go ahead to plant whenever I wanted. Apparently they’re not monitoring my lawn. 
I made the decision not to put down weed barrier in the main growing areas, because when planting new plants I tend to pull up the weed barrier and uproot old plants. But this lead to pretty much every sod clump I missed sprouting again. Julie gave me a lot of crap about this. So I’ve been weeding and adding more mulch. Hopefully that will tide me over until I get the plants in and they can start controlling the weeds. I’m about 5 hours into the weeding right now and I’ve only done one side. * sigh *
But the yellow bearded irises are blooming. So I’m happy. Irises are indeed fantastic shade plants. I’ve found you have to keep them from getting completely overwhelmed by leaves, but otherwise they grow really nicely and come back year after year. And they’re one of the few shade plants that doesn’t need supplementary watering. 
To make myself feel better about all my weeding I also planted 4 rose buses along the western wall of the hose, and put in 4 agaves. I needed a little carrot to keep going.

So some people on Facebook were asking for a before/after. I used a pretty old picture from Google Streetview that I think captures the before pretty well. It’s amazing what a new garage door, some plants, and grass removal can do.

Nearly killed myself this weekend, but it is done. My Dad who is the real hero of this project was able to come over and help me both days. I had to go out for more edging. The granite seemed like it would never be done. And after dark (THANKS DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME), we managed to finish. So no photos day of. Then this morning I put the river rock in front of the retaining wall. And that’s it. Gotta submit to the city for my rebate and wait to plant. And cleanup a huge pile of granite.
I am so happy with how it turned out, and so is Julie. It definitely fits the design of the house in a way that an English garden would not. 

This morning started out rocking and rolling. I got a fair amount of granite and cloth in place. My neighbors have convinced me to use the “contractor grade” landscape fabric, and I’ve got to say it already seems to be much heavier than the black stuff. It lays flat when you work with it. It’s really tough. I can roll a wheelbarrow over it. Seems to be good stuff. Anyway, I got a bit of the yard done when those same neighbors came over to talk to my daughters. I was talking about what a pain the hills were going to be with the steel edging and George told me I needed a retaining wall.
I spent about an hour grumbling in my head that I didn’t need a retaining wall, before realizing that really the retaining wall was pretty much necessary and would solve my hill problems. So when my dad got over we got to work and built the wall in 3 hours with brick from my backyard. We all think it looks great. And Julie’s really liking how the yard looks with the granite. It just makes everything pop. Especially the rose bushes.
So tomorrow hopefully we’ll rock and roll and get the rest of the edging in place, and crossing my fingers the rest of the granite. I think with my Dad laying the fabric and spreading it we’ll get it done quick. 

So today I took another day off work. We had the granite and mulch ordered. We had a lot of edging. I started out cleaning up the rest of the river rock and putting it in that weird area to the right of our front door. It looks nicer over there, but still lacks any real purpose. We need a fountain or piece of art or something.

My dad came over (he rocks) and we started on edging the garden boxes. We knocked the entire West side of the yard out before lunch. We went out for lunch, and picked up some more edging pieces and the RIGHT landscape fabric from the Muller Home Depot. I cleaned out the Woodward Home Depot yesterday morning. In case you’re looking for brown steel edging corners.

We came back, and ate, then finished the East side after the dump-truck came. Then using kitty litter buckets left by the previous inhabitants of this home we trucked all the mulch into the two garden beds. Endured some more taunting from neighbors (you are going to put plants in there right?) and more confusion from Julie. But it’s getting close.

I’ve just got to have faith that people are going to like it once the plants are in. You people are really bad at visualizing landscapes without plants.

 

It’s gone! Finally all the grass is gone. I’ve still been working on the yard, but mostly with the fiddly little stuff that doesn’t take fantastic before and after pictures. I ended up renting a sod cutter after my neighbors generously offered me the use of their truck. It took a bit to figure out, and unfortunately couldn’t be used on the parts I’d already started removing grass on, but it took out most of the rest of the front yard in less than 2 hours. A bit of a pain if you’re by yourself as you have to roll up a row before you can start the next or everything gets tangled in the cutter. I also now have a massive pile of dead grass in my backyard.

After that I spent Saturday and Sunday just cleaning up all the patches that had been missed. Which took quite a bit of work. I’m working on getting my sod and decomposed granite delivered tomorrow, and still need to work on getting the steel edging to go down hill, but things are actually starting to look like the end is in sight.

So after much leveling finally got to start shoveling stone. This is how it looks after an hour of work this morning. It needs a lot of cleaning up, but it’s definitely starting to resemble something and looking sharp.

On a sad note while hammering in edging this weekend my trusty rubber mallet splintered in two. It was both a gardening and cooking tool as I had used it to flatten many a chicken breast and pork chop. It will be missed.