Our Yard, Part 1

We've lived in our house now for about 10 months. When we moved in last summer the yard was an overwhelming .25 acre weed patch. There were a few "untamed" older plants but only a handful of them, and only one tree (a spruce, approximately 100 years old and not doing well). Here are some of the pictures of when we moved in:

along the south side

hedge parallel to 900 East, the west edge of the yard

view from Northwest corner of lot, note the sad spruce tree

When we moved in most of our efforts went towards home (interior) improvements like painting, carpeting, electrical, tons of cleaning, etc. Efforts to improve the landscape were rather minimal last year. Here are a few things we did accomplish--mowing the weeds down, spraying the weeds, trimming the shrubs and hedge, pulling weeds, pulling ivy off of the spruce, poisoning gophers, and hacking at stumps that we discovered are all over the place. The picture below is our landscape at the beginning (yes, it is to scale)...

One of the major efforts in landscaping that we started last summer was creating a path from our driveway to the back door. The back door is our main entryway and when we moved in there were a few cement slabs on the ground and mostly dirt. The previous owner had used the southeast corner of the lot as an additional parking area and it was all gravel (and weeds, of course). We laid out the area for our desired path using twine and then began digging. This area of the yard will forever be a thorn in our sides because over time the gravel has been compacted into the dirt...very hard digging. When the pathway was ready we laid landscape fabric down and used treated redwood for edging the path. We began raking the gravel from the 'additional parking' spot onto the driveway and cleaned it out. Once the gravel was clean we began shoveling it into our path area. The whole process took a long time. There could have been a lot of easier solutions to creating a path but they would have required money. This was a very affordable solution with materials that we mostly had.

THAT was last year. This year, since the weather has warmed, we've been out in the yard nearly every day. I should admit that August has done most of the work as I am currently a very big pregnant person. At the beginning of April, August's parents came over to our house with their tractor. We tilled up the entire yard. We graded some and created a berm along 900 East.

After certain areas were tilled up we began raking. Raking, unfortunately, is an essential part in the landscape process. It allows you to level the earth more accurately than you can with a tractor...it gets out lumps, bumps, clumps, rocks, etc. We started with the southeast corner. The backyard has kind of become our front yard and it has become one of our main focal points in the landscaping/beautification process. Everyone who visits us, enters through an alleyway behind our house to get to the driveway. Our neighbors all get to their houses through the same alley and get a good look at the back of our house, so we want it to look nice.

my amazing mother-in-law, raking

laying out our weed barrier

Did you know that layered newspaper is a top-notch weed barrier? Well, its true. You just lay it out and wet it down. After our (free) weed-barrier was laid we put down mulch. This was also free. We got a whole trailer load full of mulch from someone trying to get rid of it on ksl.com (Utah's classifieds).

Above is after we got the mulch raked out. You can also see the gravel path we had created.

Below are views looking at the area after we had planted some things.

The plants that were planted up to this point are all from either our yard (transplanted to better locations) or from August's parents yard. We planted: strawberries, a mugo pine, lavender, lots of blue fescue grasses, columbine, rhubarb, flower bulbs, and blue mist shrubs. Some of you who read our blog probably don't care what the heck we planted...but I know there are some of our LAEP and landscaping pals that are interested, that is why I'm including plant names.

We were also able to get some sod for FREE. (I love KSL.) It is amazing what you can do to your yard for nothing. So many people have plants they want to get rid of, extra sod from a project, mulch from cutting down a tree, etc. There are NO excuses to not being able to take care of your yard. Yes, money would certainly be nice and make things easy but with a bit of labor, sweat, and finding those free deals you really can beautify a place.

The above pictures are of our freshly laid sod and some newly planted plants in front of the front porch. The shrub there is a Quince (one of my personal favorites). We transplanted the Quince from being between two of our 10' mystery shrubs. The sod measures to be about 20'x 20' square.

We have drawn up so many plans for our yard and they change almost daily while we are out working. We've found our plans also have to adapt to what materials are available to us at this time. Since our income is minimal (and certainly none available for landscaping) we've been using creativity and a lot of ksl freebies to do what we can. It has been so satisfying to see something change. The mailman told me today that our yard looks the best he's seen it in years. I believe him! I'll do another post soon when we get some more work done!