Landscaping

The weather has warmed up and we have finally finished our front yard. It looks great! We had so much help from family, neighbors and ward members-who racked, shoveled and laid sod. We couldn't have done it without you! As sad as it is to say, I think landscaping is harder than building a house.

This is just after Ernie finished the sprinkler system and began to fill in the trenches to cover the pipes.

After that we got straight to work on racking up the rocks and smoothing out the dirt. This took a good week to do. There was so many rocks.

Saturday afternoon we started laying sod! Everyone showed up to help which made the work load easy and fast. We had 4,135 sq. feet to put down for just our front yard! A lot of work.

FINISHED!!!

These are our planter boxes. I was a little nervous about how they would turn out because of how they looked after we put down sod. Looks awful and unfinished.

Weeks later.....

Anna is now showing off our finished front yard. Wait, what? You can't see anything? Hold on lets get a closer look.

We put curbing all the way around the porch which looks fantastic. It is colored and stamped which you can see better in the picture below.

We planted daylilies in the back and white geraniums in the front with a delphinium in the corner. It still looked a little unfinished, so we added chocolate brown wood chips. This really made the plants stick out.

To add a bit more color I added a red pillow to the chairs (shown in first porch picture) and I think I might add a red throw blanket to the other chair. Then I really got to thinking when I thought of painting our door red. I really need some input, will a red door add charm and color or will it distract?

On the corner of the porch we planted a Wisteria vine with purple flowers. I'm so excited about this plant, because as it grows we're going to have it wrap up and over the porch to frame it. I think this will look good.

This corner is right by our front door. I just watered the flowers, which is why the cement looks weird. I love how much life and color the flowers add to the house.

This spot was a little hard to figure out. We just planted these flowers to pass our inspection. I plan on digging them back up and putting them on the porch. Now I need to go back to the drawing board for this planter box. Any suggestions?

(Note: the left side, where the taller plant is, gets no sun.)

This is our Red Maple tree. In the fall the leaves will turn a deep red, which I think will make a lovely contrast with our house.

The planter box in front of the porch continues to wrap around to the side of the house where we planted another delphinium and a hydrangea! I'm so excited about this hydrangea plant, I love these flowers. The lady at the nursery said that if we planted it without any extra soil or fertilizer then the flowers will turn pink. Pink is what I wanted so that's what we did.

But...as you can see the flowers are blue. They still look gorgeous but not quite what I wanted. (There are some that are blooming purple which I love.)