Landscaping Project

 

What an effort! With the help of my Mother, we pulled some enormous shrubs from the side of the house and planted a beautiful garden. We still are working on the sides of the house and the back yard, but here are a few photos of our efforts so far.

 

Project #1: Remove the shrubs from the side of the house!
The problem: overgrown shrubs planted right against the walls of the house with roots growing under the foundation.
With the help of a pickaxe, shovel, crowbar and a lot of muscle power, we were able to dig out the roots. Our Subaru Outback provided the final muscle to pull this huge shrub free of the last few roots!
With the shrubs out of the way, we were able to plant a rhododendron, a rose bush, a peony, some junipers and other plants in its spot. We still have one more shrub to remove, but after the immense battle we fought with the last one, maybe this one will have to wait until next year! We wanted to save the shrubs to replant along the fence as privacy hedges, so we rolled the several-hundred pound shrub to the backyard, dug a 6-foot by 6 1/2 foot hole and planted it alongside a smaller shrub we had transplanted earlier. Easier said than done!

 

Project #2: Fix the Front Yard!
The problem: overgrown shrubs again, bricks leading nowhere, boring front yard. More problems: depression to the right of the porch steps creates a problem with water drainage. Ugly pavement leading to porch steps.
We dug up all the sod in the pattern we wanted for the front garden, and dug out more shrubs to replant in the backyard. Once again our Subaru Outback provided the final muscle to pull the shrubs free, although these ones we were too tired to save and just chopped them up and dug them out.
Our yard now, highlighted by the birdbath on the left side and the Japanese Maple on the right. A lot of dirt filled in the depression next to the porch where we planted a Golden Eunoymous bush, and we used a lot of pebble rock and chipped rock as well as the old bricks to make a pleasing walkway leading to the porch.

 

Project #3: Fix the Backyard
Problem: Deck in backyard exposes ugly dirt and rock underneath. Problem: Depression on both sides of concrete steps are causing the rock wall to bow in, and the front of the steps has an ugly sharp dropoff where concrete has disintegrated or fallen off.
Solution in progress:
We filled in the sides of the concrete steps with dirt and filled the front with white marble chip rock, although we still need some more to smooth out the look. We planted hostas on the shady side of the deck which should grow tall enough to cover the exposed ground underneath the deck, and planted a rhododendron in the near corner of the deck and butterfly bushes in the center and far corner of the deck, all of which should grow big enough to reach the upper level of the deck railing. I will be filling in gaps with transplanted azalea bushes.

 

Other Ongoing Projects
In addition to the work on the front and side of the house, we transplanted hostas around the trees to add more interest. A few more shrubs we transplanted from the front to the back, after trimming them down to a more reasonable side. Hopefully once we transplant all the shrubs we will have a solid row of privacy hedges.

 

What Kind of Tree is It?

We weren't sure what kind of trees were in our backyard when we first moved in. As the leaves grew in, we were pretty sure the large tree closest to our deck was an Oak tree, but we had no idea of the other two. Now that summer has arrived, we have been given some pretty big clues....
This is the tree furthest in the back. After closer inspection, we determined it to be: Cherries! This tree is now bursting full of not-quite-ripe cherries, from the very top to the bottom. We are soon going to have probably thousands of cherries — it's a big tree!
Our other mystery tree, in the middle of the backyard. When you look closely into the branches you now will find... Apples! It looks like we have granny smith apples growing. None of them are very big yet, but they are growing fast. Anyone for some tart apple pie?

 
Click the left arrow to see the previous set of pictures of our new house, or the right arrow to see closeups of our landscaping efforts.

 

 

Did you enjoy these pictures? Also see:

Pictures of Juneau, Alaska

and

Pictures of Washington, D.C.

and

Vacation, 2001

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