Our front yard landscaping has never been very appealing, even when we bought our house I wasn’t a fan of it. As much as I love growing flowers, landscaping has never been a huge interest of mine, especially once I realized how expensive it can be and how laborious it is as well.
At the beginning of the summer, we did some gardening and cleared out all the weeds in our small, front yard garden (we live in a townhouse). But, then life got busy and we didn’t work on it the rest of the summer.
I didn’t want to share this before photo because it’s super embarrassing how bad our front yard landscaping was the past few months, I mean the weeds just grow like crazy in our front yard! But, you have to see the before to appreciate the after right?! Ha! Well here’s the before photo…
BEFORE PHOTO:
I couldn’t stand the look of it and it was time to start fresh! We wanted our small front yard landscaping to be simple, budget friendly, classic, and low maintenance. We aren’t planning on staying in this house long term so we didn’t want to spend too much money or do anything super custom or expensive.
This past weekend we finally gave our front yard garden a makeover! Brandon did all the hard labor on this project and I am so grateful for that! I just picked out plants, a tree, and the design!
First, we removed all the weeds and the huge, odd shaped green bush that I couldn’t stand, which made a huge difference immediately. Then, we transplanted the hydrangea plant to a pot and moved it to the back yard since it was getting too much sun in the front yard anyways. We finally had a blank canvas to work with!
Originally, I wanted to plant 3 boxwood plants, but I couldn’t find the right size species (the kind that only gets 2-3 feet tall) for a good price. So, I ended up going with Japanese Holly, which looks similar and is very low maintenance! It was also only $27 per plant at Home Depot and they are halfway grown already! Also, I decided to plant a small tree instead of a 3rd plant because we have an ugly utility box on the front of our house and I wanted it to be covered. I picked out a dwarf Juniper Spruce tree that gets 5-6 feet tall. It’s so cute and it was 50% off at a local nursery!
Brandon started by digging the holes for the plants and tree and adding some gravel and organic soil mix in the holes. Then, he used a hand tamper to flatten the dirt and garden surface out around the holes. Next, he added the plants and tree to the holes, laid weed barrier, and spread mulch out over the garden. Finally, he put some gravel down along the front garden edge to create an even surface for the garden stone edge which was added last.
Here’s the final result!!!
So much better than before! I still want to add some more stones to make more of a retaining wall, add window flower boxes in the spring, and power wash the bricks and concrete steps. Also, we need to plant grass now too! House projects are always continuing!
What do you think? Do you have any fall landscaping projects going on? I’m happier now every time I walk to our front door and pass the front yard landscaping!
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