Making a garden sweet garden... Part 1

I don't know if I should consider myself lucky or not, but my house came completely landscape-free. I do mean COMPLETELY. There were absolutely no flowers to go with the zero curb appeal my house had to offer. Unless you count the dandelions in the yard full of weeds.

After doing most of the major work on the outside of the house, I finally turned my attention to the exterior of the house. Though I'm not finished with it yet, I have done some landscaping (flowers!!! yay!!!) and generally tried to make it nicer and more functional.

This is the front of my house before... actually, this was taken before I bought the house. I love the lovely gas meter that sits front and center! And the weeds in the yard!



This is the backyard... the garage. Before I bought the house, of course. The garage door would not shut at the time.



And the back of the house. My favorite part, of course, is the electric "pole" that comes out of the house and runs across the porch, then down, under the ground, and into the garage. This was also taken before I bought the house, so all the junk there is not mine. The bricks are also crumbling and falling apart in places.



So now that you have a reminder of what I had to work with, you should appreciate what I've done!

I began in the front of the house, because that lovely gas meter really wasn't doing it for me as far as curb appeal. My dad told me to figure out what I wanted, which really is easier said than done as I have zero experience in this area. I came up with some sort of an idea on my own, which I illustrated in Photoshop to send to my dad.

First, I illustrated where I might want the mulched area to be... using the paint tool in Photoshop. (Please ignore my brown grass! This picture was taken in March!)



Obviously, the main goals were to hide the gas meter and make the house look prettier, so I sent my dad a picture showing him exactly how we might do that. :-) We talked about grasses to hide the gas meter. I am a big fan of lilies, so I thought those might look nice.



I wasn't sure I really got my point across, so I sent him another mockup of my potential front yard... text notations and all, just in case he didn't get it. :-)



Aren't those great? :-)

After we determined what the landscaping might look like, the next step was actually making it happen. My dad helped me "shape" the space in the front of the house where the flowers would go. By helped, of course, I mean he did it for me. I was making his dinner. :-) However, I knocked all the topsoil off the grass we removed from the area and mulched it myself.



It sat like that for an entire month, all boring and ugly, while I waited for the Roundup I used to do it's job killing all the weeds and grass that was in the space. I couldn't plant any plants in there for fear the Roundup would kill them too. I promise, it was an agonizing month, because I REALLY wanted to plant some flowers!

This is called "May Night Salvia" and I was very excited to plant it in my garden!



But finally, the day came! I gladly dug into the soil and planted my first batch of flowers! Unfortunately, it looks a little plain because the flowers hadn't quite bloomed yet!



However, I still had that awful gas meter in my way. I still hadn't made a decision on what might go in front of the meter that would still keep it accessible to the meter reader (I hear they get cranky about landscaping in front of the meters! I say it's their fault for putting it DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF THE HOUSE!)

A wonderful person from work named Darlene was nice enough to share some of her plants with me, and created a (free!) solution to my gas meter problem. She gave me a plant called Althea that had the height needed to hide the gas meter, but didn't have any thorns that would make it difficult for the meter reader when it was time to read the meter.

This is a newly planted Althea in the front of my house. As Darlene told me, the plant looks like it's dying for like a week, and then it just takes off. However, you can see how the Althea has the height necessary to hide my gas meter! :-)


This is the Althea in my backyard that has been planted for 3 or 4 weeks now... can you see how big and beautiful it is? I can't wait for the other Althea plant to take off too!


So that is the first part of my landscaping adventure! Check back soon to see the rest of my landscaping adventure and the beautiful flowers I now have growing!