So yesterday I made another garden bed

[treedimensional]

Good job! I'm proud of you!
Now what are you going t plant there?

[treedimensional]

I think you should expand the bed, so that the end down by the wood fence curves out, away from the house, and ends at the front sidewalk. It should run all the way down along the neighbor's driveway, and create a border at the property line.
The side that ends at the sidewalk next to your front door should not curve at all. It should just join up to the walkway right where it gets narrower, a few feet in front of your stoop.

[treedimensional]

You can put stepping stones down right in the mulch.

And the little tree will do MUCH better with more water and less grass around its roots.

[FoxInFiji]

Yes we put a flower bed in front of our dog yard bed and put flagstone in mulch for stepping stones. We also made the bed curvy and made the area in front of the gate the thin part of the curve so you are funneled/invited into the gate.

I like your plan! I love adding flower beds. I try to add 1-2 every year. We have such a big yard (front, side, and back yard near the house and big "lower" yard on the corner of the property) and a lot of beds/areas to fix up. The original owners were avid gardeners and built lots of raised flower beds and rock wall flower beds. Then the second owners let everything go for 10 years. It's going to take me a lifetime to get it all looking nice again and filled in with the plants I like. Plus I've added/expanded beds on top of the existing ones. This year I'm going to try taking on a huge project of turning in a steep grade on the north side of the house into terraced flower beds. It's a tangled wild mess right now so it's going to be difficult to dig in that root system.

[FoxInFiji]

Yeah it's going to be a big project. Especially since DH is going to be busy and gone most of the summer so I won't have much help. It's the most hidden side that you can't see from the road or backyard so it's just been forgotten about. It had multiple volunteer sapplings growing in it when we bought the house but we cut those all down. Here's some old pics:



The A/C unit is gone now because we're geothermal. This is in the spring after we had weedwacked everything down in the fall. In the background where the woods starts is now the dog yard and fence.

Here's what it starts to look like later in the year:


The 60' long fence flower bed is what we added last year. I don't have a good picture of the whole thing but here is the end of the bed.


I put a big ceramic pot filled with annuals on the old stump.

I'm getting so excited to work on my gardening plans this year! Can you tell?   The plan is to put 3 terraced beds down the slope and have a sort of Japanese zen garden look over there with conifers, shrubs, and a perennials with downward facing blooms like hellbores and solomon's seal (since you'll see them from below).  I'm jealous you can even start working on your flower beds yet. We still have snow in some spots...the ice on the ponds just finished melting two days ago.

ETA:  OMG I just found a picture from when we first walked through the house and this is what that slope used to look like!  I forgot how bad it was.

[vic1011]

I'm impressed. I make my DH do all this stuff!

[alicenelson]

Hey...that's looking nice!

[sierramist03]

Wow that's a lot of shoveling! Looks good though

[alicenelson]

BAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Wheeeeeeee!

[sierramist03]

Apr 13, 2013 0:20:02 GMT -5 FormerlyRR said:

Apr 13, 2013 0:08:31 GMT -5 sierramist03 said:

Wow that's a lot of shoveling! Looks good though

You mean the shit alicenelson and I are shoveling? Or FoxInFiji's plans? Both are a lot... ;)This post courtesy of Pinot Grigio.

I was meaning yours drink up that wine it helps the pain lol