Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Oh spring, how I love you. But I know you'll never last long here in WI. Soon it will be sweltering hot days and I'll somehow be wishing for winter again. So for now I think we should get our butts in grove and start on some of the landscaping we've been talking about.


This is a sketch of what I'd like the front of the house to look like.  We would like to do raised flower gardens in the front, but that's gonna have to wait because that crap is expensive.  We're going to hold off on the raised beds for a year or two, but we will have them someday.

We've decided just to do a regular flower bed (well I've decided this is how the front of the house is going to look soon, J hasn't had too much imput).  We're going to edge the garden with a fun little walkway from our neighbors driveway to ours.  We don't have sidewalks in our neighborhood, so the mailman walks on the grass.  We don't really mind, but we also don't really want him to wear a path in the grass.  So the solution, make a concrete path for him to walk on.

We've found a mold that looks like cobblestone that we like a lot.  We even kinda like the idea of the grass eventually growing up between the pavers.  It should be cute.  Our local home improvement store has these and they have the cement stain, so if we want, we can color the concrete to match the house.  We'll see about that, we haven't really decided if we want to color or not.

We plan on doing a short winding path across the front of the house.  We plan on using this to edge the flower garden (as stated before).  J has warned me not to go overboard on the flowers, so I'm trying to keep it modest.  I bought some little white flowers that will be the ground cover (I can't remember what they're called), some bright heirloom poppies, a mix of oriental lilies (gotta love lilies), some hyacinths (because I love how fragrant they are), and maybe some gladiolas.

I've been watching a lot of PBS's Create as of late, trying to absorb as much home and garden info as possible.  One of the shows were talking about not planting flowers in rows, but in little bunches of color, so that's the plan.  I'll plant the bulbs and seeds in little bunches and fill in with the ground color.

In my mind this is the most fantastic flower garden in the world, we'll see what it looks like once we're done.  I'm sure it will be far from the most fantastic garden.  But anything will increase the curb appeal of our house.  That is one thing that it is lacking.  I'm make sure to post some step by step pictures when we start.  And I'll show you the lack of curb appeal and how wonderful it will be after I work my magic.  Hahahaha, that's funny.     

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Sounds like some great plans!I like the idea of planting in groups instead of rows, but I still like the charm of 30's - 40's gardens planted in rows. Hmmm....

It will take you years to get your landscaping to where you want it. it is a constantly evolving process. Take your time with it and be super choosy...and most of all have fun with it!

I moved into this house over 10 years ago. When I first got here, there was only pine trees (besides one japanese maple) and no gardens. I have since created several large gardens, dug up a huge pond in the back with a fountain and a water fall, planted a cleveland pear and several more japanese maples, installed a veggie garden....and I am not even close to being where I want this yard to look! It has taken me 10 years so far and I prolly have 10 more to go...if not more! But it is so fun seeing your landscaping evolve over the years....be sure to document it with photos every year so you can really appreciate the changes!