Extreme Yard Makeover

We had been planning to have some work done on the outside of our house this year and did lots of research and planning for it, since it wasn't cheap!

First, we had a tree company come and look at our trees. They all needed to be trimmed, since some had started to have limbs touching the house. We also had one that needed to be cut down because it was planted too close to the house and was a possible threat for cracking our foundation. Preventative maintenance- I'm a HUGE fan! And then we had one planted.

Then we had landscaping done!! Finally!

If you know me, I love before and after pictures, so hold on.....there's bunch!

This is the west side of our house before the tree trimming.



Here's a close up of the three Magnolias on the west side. The one closest to the house is the one that had to be cut down.

Here's a picture of the tree from the backyard. It's the one right behind the satellite dish.

This is the Cherry Tree on the East side before it was trimmed.




Front of the house after tree trimming but before landscaping. Sorry it's dark. I ran outside to snap these the night before the landscapers were coming.

We got all the supplies for the landscaping and then my brother, who works for a landscaping company, brought over a crew of five guys and they worked, pretty much non-stop for 10 hours for our transformation.

These are stones we used for the beds. We ended up getting another pallet, so that's 5 pallets of stone. Four yards of mulch and 4 yards of dirt were also delivered to my driveway that morning but I didn't get a picture of that.

I researched which plants to use after getting several quotes and designs from other companies. I bought all the plants the day before. Boy, that was also a busy day!

All the activity kept the kids occupied. It also brought out all the neighbors.

They cleaned out all of our beds and pulled up most of the plants.

Okay, here come the befores and afters. Please don't judge me for how terrible these beds looked before. Having three children in three and half years took its toll on my flower beds for sure!

East side of house bed, standing in driveway. Yes, those tall things are WEEDS, not plants.

After. Isn't that just amazing??!!
More of the east side bed....before.
East side flower bed before. Wow! It really was a jungle.
The whole east side bed before.
East side bed after. I love how clean it is! In fact, after they cleaned it all out and there were no plants in there I told them thank you, that alone would have taken me five years to complete!
Remember this before picture of the tree not trimmed and no landscaping?

The after picture of the trimmed tree and landscaping.
Looking down the bed, toward front door from driveway.

The Hosta is original to the house and I had them put bed flowers around it because that corner gets full sun.

Behind the Hosta is an August Beauty Gardenia. This variety will bloom spring and summer. I'm hoping that the scent will be noticeable as guests walk up our walkway, and to us entering our garage.

Next to the Gardenia and under all the windows are four Autumn Embers Encore Azaleas. They will bloom a deep orange-red color spring to fall. They didn't have any blooms on them when we planted them but are now starting to blossom. I'm so excited! (Wow- doesn't take much, does it?) We searched for a while for this variety as they will only get 3 ft tall and won't cover the windows.

In front of the Cherry tree I had them replant some of my Day Lilies, after they thinned them out. They look terrible in these pictures and are just now starting to re-grow and will bloom again soon.

And at the other side of the bed from this picture, is one Mini Penny Hydrangea. It has the sweetest, pale pink blossoms on it. I told JuJu that I bought her a pink bush. She asked if we could put it in her room. :)

Before....the bed in front of the dining room.
During......
After of the dining room window bed. You can see my little Mini Penny peeking out on the left.

We planted sky pencil hollies on either side of the window. They will get 10-12 ft tall and are evergreen.

Between those are four dwarf Firepower Nandinas. These are also evergreen and have wonderful colors to them! They range from a bright, lime green in spring to a deep, fire-engine red in the fall. I have always wanted these in our beds for the color. We also searched for these, as they will only get 2 feet tall. Those widows are so low that not a lot of shrubs can go there.

Planted in front of the Nandinas but staggered with them are some of the Day Lilies from the East bed that we thinned out. I had so many left over that we put them to use!



Before of the western bed, by the front door.
And after. I am so pleased with this bed! It really opens up our front door to have those big boxwoods gone! The bed flowers in this bed were kind of an after thought and low on my priority list. I have been scoping out that bed now though to see if it would be good for a bird bath or fountain.

Before of the front door.....


...and after. I'm so glad those bushes are gone! Have I said that yet?

The pictures are getting darker, sorry. This a before the landscaping of the western bed (after the tree trimming and tree removal.)

And after. Not much was done in this part of the bed. We had this tree trimmed by the tree company. Korey's crew cleaned out the bed, trimmed up my white blooming azaleas along the brick wall so beautifully and cut the boxwoods in front down a bunch! That was part of the plan. They look bare in these picture, but that's just because they had to trim them back so much so that you could see the azaleas in the back. They also trimmed them so that, hopefully, they'll start to grow together like a hedge. More of a boxy cut than the rounded cut that I had been doing (aka- less maintenance).

Before of the bed under the magnolias. (Remember this picture from earlier?)
And after. I didn't get quite the same angle on this picture, but I think you get the idea.
Close up of our rock creek bed. I love it! It turned out even more beautiful than I had imagined. Those guys are so talented and definitely know what they are doing.
And another picture of the bed. The magnolia that was taken out was to the left of this rock creek bed. This part of our yard was just dirt and when it rained it just washed all that dirt out from under those trees. We are hoping that this will be a good solution to that drainage problem. See our gutter extension running over to the creek? I keep wanting to go check it out while it's raining so I can see how it's working.....but I don't want to get wet. :)



Before landscaping and tree trimming........

And after. Wow! You can actually see our house now!

Now on to the back yard. This is a before of our deck.....

And after. Now, we obviously still have some work to do here, but they transplanted one of my pink blooming azaleas from the right over to the left. Then they transplanted the two boxwoods from the front, western bed to this bed. Now what to do in the middle? If I had realized how big those boxwoods are I would have had them move them over more and give those azaleas some room and then I think it would have been fine. So I don't know. I'm gonna think about it.

They also staggered four Day Lilies between those shrubs. They are re-growing very nicely right now.

Phil is (well, was...before our house started falling apart) in the process of fixing up the deck- replacing old boards, replacing lattice, staining, etc., which is why the lattice is missing. Hopefully he can finish that up soon.



Before the landscaping and tree trimming of the northwest corner of our backyard.
After tree trimming but before landscaping....
After. Wow! There's tree in there.....and look how small that bush actually is! The tree is a Red Bud tree and blooms purple blooms in the spring. The bush is a Forsythia and turns completely bright yellow in spring. It is gorgeous, but apparently had gotten a bit out of hand.

The Red Bud tree was a split tree, but one half had died. The tree trimmers cut that dead part out. There also were three small Cherry Trees growing behind the dog house and right up into our fence that they cut down.

The one thing I don't like about having this area under control is that now we can see our neighbor's house.


And our new tree!!! This is an October Glory Maple that turns the most brilliant orange-red in fall. I bought one of these for Phil for our 5th wedding anniversary (which is wood), which is in October. It was much smaller and lived for about 2 years and then died. We are hoping that this one makes it. It's a much bigger tree.

Also in this picture is the new swing set and play structure that Phil built. He started the project a couple of years ago, when Chase was three I think, and just built the swing set. Then this past fall he turned it into a play structure. Isn't he so talented?!

None of this may be very amazing to those of you who are reading it, but to us and in real life it is a tremendous improvement! And this blog is really our family document, but I like to share it with you all.

I still cannot believe those guys did all of this work in one day! Seriously, Phil and I could have never done this ourselves.

Excellent job Uncle Korey. We know who we're calling from now on!