From House to Home : Landscaping

Hello!  I'm sure you've wondered whether or not I am still here... And yes, I am!  Just super busy and out of pocket over the past few weeks... lots to catch up on and hoping to do so this week.

Hope you had a nice 4th of July celebrating our great nation's independence. Our 4th of July was very enjoyable... pictures to come soon!

This posting begins our "From House to Home" series... since moving into our new house in November, we've slowly transformed our house into our home... thanks to my sweet husband.  He totally rocks in this area!

Today, I will be sharing the transformation of our front landscaping.

The weekend of the boys' birthday party in Martin, we returned to Columbia pulling a cattle trailer full of shrubs.  We quickly discovered that shrubs and trees here in Columbia will break your pocketbook, and seem to be very over-priced.  Zimm's nursery in Martin, our hometown, is very reasonably priced and Mr. Zimmerman is always more than happy to help us.  Of course, Russ' preplanning is extremely helpful.  {Did I mention that he often displays OCD behavior in the home improvement area?} :) 

Our neighborhood has covenants to ensure the aesthetic appearance of the neighborhood remains high and that pleases us.  With that said, the covenant for landscaping requires six shrubs and two trees.  There are, however, no specifications on what kind of shrubs/trees or quality, simply quantity.  Quantity doesn't always equal quality, if you get my point.  Our builder planted what was required plus four shrubs and considered it done. 

Russ didn't consider the ten shrubs and two trees "done".  The cattle trailer sat in our driveway for about two weeks.  I'm almost certain there is a covenant regarding livestock trailers, but fortunately we didn't receive a little note.  :)  It took 3 good days of work before it was completed and unfortunately, those three days were broken meaning things were a mess for about two weeks, but at last it all came together.  When we purchased our house, we planned to tackle this project in the spring and I am so proud of how it turned out.  Russ' planning and hard work are evident and it looks so nice.

Here are two BEFORE pictures...

The front right side of the house was the biggest part of the project. Due to the slope of the yard for the basement, the front right side was washing away.  The first thing to do was to expand and raise the end of the flowerbed both to keep it from washing away and to make it look nicer.

He removed the grass and leveled it in order to expand the flowerbed.

In order to build up the right end of the bed, he built a stone wall.  These first two steps took one day... much longer than we expected.  And for some reason, I can't find the pictures from the building of the wall.

Once it was complete, he removed the old shrubs.

Here is the stone wall.  We purchased it to match the stone on our house.  He expanded the bed out past the edge of the house allowing space for a new tree.

Lawson had so much fun helping his dad.  Due to raising the bed and expanding it, he back filled it with a small gravel, then covered with topsoil... LOTS of topsoil!!!  (4 pick-up truck loads)

-Spreading the topsoil-



He was so cute and had SO much fun!

And so did Mr. Emmitt... I'm afraid to know how much he ate during these three days... taking comfort in the fact that he's still going strong! :)

We also removed the shrubs from the front of the dining room window.  This bed required no major work other than adding topsoil as it laid lower than we preferred.

And finally, it was time to add the new shrubs and trees, followed by mulch and a few stones for coordination of the wall.

We used a variety of textures and colors within the plantings and are very pleased with how it turned out.

And here it is... the AFTER shots!

Thanks for reading... interior pictures plus more to come!