Landscaping Project

When we first moved into our home (October of 2005), the previous owners had spent money landscaping the whole yard, with help from Bachman's.  It looked very nice.  We had privacy bushes along the backyard and very nice bushes, plants and trees in the front.  With only one child (at the time) we were able to keep it up, but as time continued and three more children joined our family, our time spent outside decreased.  We first got rid of the privacy bushes and put up a fence.  The kids needed as much space to play as possible...our back yard is small enough.  This summer, we decided to redo the front yard to look clean and simple.  This is our journey...

 The first step was to cut the trees, bushes, and plants down and then pull them out from the roots.

 It was quite a job and made quite a mess.  I think our neighbors thought we were insane.  The girls were interested in helping, but we tried to give them jobs inside the house :)  We, of course, chose 90 degree days with high humidity...a lot of sweating went on.

 It started to look better as the last sticks were picked up and the liner and wood chips were ripped up and thrown away.

 Once we raked the dirt smooth, we could finally start thinking about making it our own.

 We were able to lay some bullet head brick down for edging and we got the black weed liner down as well....of course, we were 2 bricks short.

 The rock was delivered and we filled it in.  We have a bench from our backyard that we are using, but it still needs a face lift.  We got four ceramic pots to plant flowers in each year.  4 girls...4 pots...they each get their own and can choose what flowers they want.  Ashlyn helped pick out the pots, she is quite proud of that.

 All the girls picked at least one purple plant...then Kadence and Aubrie added pink, Ashlyn added pink and red, and Sabrina picked yellow.  They helped plant them and water them...now we wait for them to grow.

                  We did add a little personal touch :)

We are very happy with the outcome...it really was worth the sweat.  We still have some hostas to plant under the remaining tree and the bench needs to be repainted.  Those can be completed at any time...before schools starts is out goal.