Summer of Home Love, Part I: Landscaping

Why didn’t anyone tell me maintaining a new-homeowner blog was an almost impossible thing to do? We’ve been rolling all summer with moving-in and moving-up activities. And the first thing we tackled: landscaping.

When we moved in May 2008 our front yard looked like this:
My mom had for years managed a beautiful English garden-style front yard with lush blossoms and mossy baskets. But by virtue of our move-in time, not much was shaking in the front yard but the world’s oldest azalea bush and a very stubborn couple of trees.

So, we dug.

And then we dug some more.

We did some root hacking and rock chopping. We dug. Neil accidentally hacked a garden snake. Robins visited en masse to feast. And then we dug some more.

After day one last June our front yard was completely bare, looking something like this:
Lovely, huh? We had for weeks tried to conceptualize what we wanted to do with the front yard, agreeing that it should be clean, very simple and easy to maintain. For the moment we were nixing the idea of trees – we have a great bay window, which people tend to block with too-big trees, that we wanted to keep clean and clear – and looking for small evergreens to fill the space and not die.

Our solution? Korean boxwoods and a topiary. We hailed consultation at Gale’s Garden Center – an associate named Carl helped us plot two boxwoods and a hydrangea (that wilted and was moved to the back yard in less than a week) in the front yard – and bought just enough bushes and mulch to make our landscaping look sparse and a little bit sad.

We also picked up a spiral topiary, which was a cheeky ode to our young-couple landscaping naivete. I had always dug those trees (probably from my days as a Roller Coaster Tycoon junkie) and wanted one the minute we bought the house. Our tree, whom we named Kingston, wasn’t tall enough for our targeted spot in the yard, so he’ll remain a potted tree until he hits his spurt.

After resetting the bricks we spent all morning digging up, we stepped back to realize one important thing: we suck at landscaping. We thought it would be closer to a piece of cake than a pain in the butt to master “clean and simple.” Au contraire:
A few weeks, a fresh mind and at least 17 hours of photoshopping later, I hit the Heights Garden Center with my mom and Nino. It was the beginning of August and I fell into one helluva sale and one moderately OK landscaping solution.

First, I bought an oversized blue pot at the center for 50 percent off, which I filled with a mum basket from Whole Foods in coordination with my summerlong hanging basket. Side of the door plot? Check!

Then came my landscaping stop-gap: mums. Fall’s upon us, folks, so I thought it only made sense to catch a flower that would look good until everything died off and would add color to our wholly unlush front yard. For some reason I thought four plants would fill the big overhaul (we ended up buying eight more mum plants the next day). At least the ten bags of mulch were a good estimation.

With plants, mulch and a slight idea in mind, we added some curves to the landscape, as well as a bed in front of our front-stoop slab. Neil and I spent about nine hours planting, turning soil, digging, laying brick and mulching… all to accomplish this:
...and a little bit of this (check out that beautiful blue pot!):
(Note: these photos were taken a few weeks after our work was done. I think we slept for about three weeks to recover.)

It must have been Euclid Garden Tour day, or something like it, because groups of people appeared to be touring our neighborhood and visiting houses that weren’t on the market. A few groups walked by our yard, giving us the thumbs up on our young-people-learning-landscaping type of job. And when we were still digging hours and hours later, they applauded our effort and supported us until the end.

I heart a friendly, supportive neighborhood!

Weeks later, the mum blossoms have withered and been removed. I’m waiting for the next wave of blossoms so I can be lush again. It’s a clean, simple look. Over the winter, we’re going to regroup and rethink our landscaping approach.

I’d love to incorporate more functional landscaping – like dwarf fruit trees and blueberry bushes (both ideas stolen from my brother), pepper plants and basil bunches – in the front yard to look good and taste even better. For now the mums, boxwoods, pots, baskets and mulch will do. It’s clean and simple. And it’s home.