If you remember what our house looked like when we first bought it, you might wonder why we ever decided to pay money to live here.  Obviously we saw the potential, but one one of the biggest selling points of this property was the yard.

We knew we wanted a good yard, fenced in, and with some established trees and plants to give it some character.  We’d looked at a ton of smaller homes and condos without much yard to speak of and were pretty bummed out.  So when we saw that this place had a third of an acre filled with potential, some mature landscaping, and the ability to put up a fence, it was a huge selling point.

I haven’t showed off the yard yet because we started this little blog during the winter, but now the plants have come back to life and it is time for a tour!

One thing we love about this place is having yard and green space all around, which makes it more private and also makes everything prettier.  Still, I have pretty mixed feelings about the exterior.  While I love a lot of the yard, some of it is still in the “potential” stage.  And most of all the exterior of the house is pretty rough.  We focused on the interior during our renovation so we’d have a nice living space, and we have yet to get to most of the outside things that we want to do, like re-siding and building decks for outdoor living.

“The New Front”

As soon as we saw this house, we knew that we wanted to change its orientation.  It used to front a busy street, but the most useful door and the driveway were both on this nice, quite side street.  This is also where we have the prettier landscaping, like these wood steps, stone wall, and holly and azalea.

We have a lot of flowering bushes, which is something that I really appreciate.  They’re relatively low maintenance (feed and prune in the spring, mulch occasionally) but make everything so happy and cheery in the spring.

On this side, we’ve also set up a bird bath and bird feeder, so we can see birds come and go from our kitchen and dining room windows.  Brad loves this and takes care of maintaining them.

Along this side we’ve also got two swamp maples, which have delicate leaves and turn amazing colors in the fall, and a “mock orange” shrub, which blooms sweet smelling little white flowers in the spring.

We can’t keep grass growing under these trees.  To get rid of the mess of weeds, we filled in the area with wood chips and are now letting the leaves form a natural mulch.  The exception are masses of bulbs, which bloom in late spring with little white flowers before dying back.  I like that it has a kind of woodsy look.

As much as we love this area, there is still a lot to do to get the curb appeal we’re looking for.  During the renovation we added bay windows along this side to help it look a little fancier, but otherwise it is untouched.

We obviously want to re-side the house (I’m thinking blue?).  We also want to rebuild that little porch into a proper front-facing covered entryway, with stairs that lead straight down into the driveway.

“The Old Front”

The side of the house which faces the busy street was pretty open when first bought it.  It also had an odd little entryway “nose,” which we demoed to let more light into the living and dining rooms.

It had a few existing bushes and a yew, as well as a a row of rosa rugosa in front of a small stone wall.  Since we don’t really want to be looking at a busy street, we added a whole lot of new bushes in our first spring which we hope will fill in, block some noise, and provide a pretty view.

We chose mainly evergreens so they would provide color and coverage year round.  I’ll talk more in a future post about what we chose and why, as I could go on for thousands of words about that!

But I can’t let this occasion go by without pointing out my favorite, this adorable little dwarf blue spruce:

He’ll grow slower than most of the others, but will still get to a pretty good size 10-15 years from now.  I love the texture and the pretty blue-green color.

We also added in a few deciduous bushes to add variety and flowers, including a star magnolia which welcomes early-spring with pretty white fireworks.

Along the corner, we also planted a hemlock to block our view of the lovely electrical post.

And I couldn’t help myself from planting a native dogwood by the mailbox, which has pretty pink flowers in spring.

Around this area I am hoping to create a pretty, small flower bed to add some curb appeal, but I haven’t gotten much farther than transplanting a few volunteers, bulbs, and plants I found on sale.  You can see the sad current state of affairs, above.  Maybe next year I’ll have the time and energy to take this on.

“The Side Yard”

Continuing around the house, we actually have a good amount of space in what we call “the side yard.”  I know that it could really be “the back yard” if we think of the “new front” as “the front”  and “the old front” as “the side” but LEAVE ME ALONE THIS IS COMPLICATED.

This area is just a long patch of grass with a gentle slope, our A/C unit, and two bushes up along the property line, one of which is an unruly, overgrown forsythia which I have a love/hate relationship with pruning every spring.  (It is so tangled that it takes like half an hour to remove one branch, but generates ARM FULLS of beautiful yellow branches to decorate our house with in early spring.)

This side also provides the best view of our magnificent old maple tree, whom I love very much.  He has a beautiful shape and provides wonderful shade in the back yard, keeping it cool and fun to be in.  He unfortunately doesn’t great fall colors, and makes our life very difficult when it comes to leaf cleanup, but, hey, you can’t be all things to all people, tree. 

Brad wants me to point out that he is home to a bird’s nest, too.  We think that may be where the cardinal lives.

I’m not really sure what we’re going to do with this area, since we have plenty of space in the backyard to fence-in, and I’m not sure we’d want to block this off.  It is our best sunny area, so if we ever want a vegetable garden we’d probably put it here in a raised bed.  I’ve also considered planting a pair of apple trees.

“The Driveway Garden”

I can’t finish this post without complaining about how much driveway we have at this house.  Seriously, WE HAVE SO MUCH ASPHALT.  We can park like 15 cars.  We have one.

In the middle of all this asphalt is a good sized flower bed with several bushes, including another forsythia and a lilac.  We haven’t done too much with it, but do enjoy having the green space here, and the somewhat random mix of flowers that we get.

It is pretty hot and dry, particularly surrounded by the driveway, so it is pretty tough to keep plants happy.  But our lilac is thrilled.

Until we re-side the house I don’t want to do too much here, because I fear it will all get trampled when we take on that project.  But when we are able to, I’d like to put in a rose bush in the back corner and try to get a few perennials established along the outside.  Most of our plants flower in the spring, and it would be great to add some summer color here.

“The Back Yard”

The back yard is pretty huge, at least for our purposes.  But it is also still sort of ugly.  We have the least landscaping here. and we have that huge expanse of driveway, which is totally unnecessary for our lifestyle.

 

We have a single, sad lilac bush here, but since our maple tree has gotten so big, it hardly gets any sun and is nearly dead.  I gave it a hard pruning in our first year but that didn’t bring it back, so I think it is toast.

However, I love the space, and it will be the perfect area to fence in for a dog or kids to play.  And at that point, we could make our own selections for landscaping to plant along the fence line, and it will look really nice.

We also have an area for grilling and eating outside, with a path into a little enclosed area where we have a tool cupboard and, get this, a shed that was converted into a sauna heated by a wood-burning stove.  Cedar-lined and everything.  It is a truly strange amenity, but I think it looks sweet with its white siding and moss-covered roof.

Next to it is an old apple tree.  It doesn’t produce any fruit (we think it is too old, but it is also possible that it just doesn’t have any others close enough to pollinate it).  Still, it makes pretty pink flowers in the spring, and provides nice shade through the summer.

The little enclosure is filled in with pretty cobblestones and lined with a rustic wood fence.  Last summer I planted a row of hostas (“volunteers” from the rest of our yard) along the edge to add a little greenery, but they’re still getting established.

We’re also trying to establish a climbing hydrangea along the outside of the wood fence.  This is a shade loving flowering vine that can get quite big, so I’m hoping it will bring some nice flowers and greenery to this area.

Behind this area we mulched in a swath of space to hide our compost bins, which we made from trash cans and bungee cords.  Brad is the master composter, so I’m hoping to tempt him into a how-to post someday on building and maintaining these.

On the other side of the enclosure, we also mulched in an area for wood storage.  As part of our house purchase we inherited many cords of split and unsplit wood, and it has to go somewhere!

I think there is so much potential in this area of the yard!  I would love to build a deck over the swath of driveway to connect the yard to our three-season porch.  With that, a fence, and a few bushes, this will be a great place to be!

“The Shade Garden”

Alongside the backyard we have a gentle slope to the quiet side street which is filled in shade loving plants.

This is my favorite part of the yard, and its a shame that there is really no good way for us to see it!  Still, I feel good about maintaining it because we get a lot of people walking along that sidewalk. Given the overall state of our house, and our tendency to have half-completed furniture projects in the driveway or yard, it is the least we can do!

We have a few small forsythia bushes, lilies, iris, snowbells, and roses.  The bushes that line the area bloom TONS of tiny white flowers in mid-spring.

I’ve also gotten several hostas and ferns started over the past few years to fill in a few gaps in greenery.

The area is covered with dwarf periwinkle, an evergreen ground cover which makes a burst of pretty purple flowers in the spring, with a few blooms continuing throughout the summer.

We rake this off in the fall and spring to keep it clear, but otherwise it pretty much maintains itself.  My kind of garden!

As you can see, we have a lot of yard!   We had no idea what we were getting into, but we have found that we both love working outside and being surrounded by land and plants.

I am really looking forward to when we can do some serious work on the exterior: re-siding the house, building the porch and back deck, and putting up a fence.  We would also love to tear up the asphalt patio where we currently keep our picnic table, and put in a fire pit surrounded by some nicer patio material, like brick or stone.

But for now we’re just really enjoying having the space to be outside and have people over!

(Sharing at AKA Design)