I just can't forget the front yard can I?

As you have probably noticed by now, most of the work that I have done to the yard has been focused on the back. In fact, most of the plants that were any good in the front were moved to the back yard. The front has been neglected and never has been designed out properly and is going to take a little more design time. I did not want to rush anything so I decided to wait until I could give it more time. There are only a couple of things up front that are even worth mentioning that will be staying. Obviously the 80' pin oak will be a fixture of the front landscape for many years to come and the previous owners did put in a nice walkway from the driveway to the front door. Other than that, there is not too much to talk about, and even the walkway may be redone to fit into my design.
I have however done a little bit of work, actually I have planted exactly one tree, but what a tree it is. I was at a local nursery just admiring the plants and seeing if they were having any late fall specials when I came across these impressive 11' tall Brackins Brown Beauty Magnolias. I had done some research on them in the past and knew this was something I would want in the yard. They have a very fragrant yellow flower in the spring and are evergreen, which is different than the more common star and saucer magnolias that have white blooms and are not evergreen. I was delighted to see that the 2 that they had left were 60% off there original price. It took me a couple of weeks to convince myself that I needed this tree, because even at 60% off, a tree of this size still comes with a bigger price tag than I was used to. I knew that I wanted something on the corner of the house to give me some spacial scale to the house because right now I just had a humungus oak and then nothing at all, there was a huge void in the landscape. I decided to take the plunge and boy am I glad I did. This one tree has already changed the dynamic of the yard and I cannot wait to see it in bloom next spring.

Lets see if we can't grow some grass

Well, if you have looked at any of the other post you will notice in the pictures that we live on a fairly wooded lot. We enjoy the privacy and shade that it provides us in the summer, but it does have some drawbacks, one being that it is much harder to grow grass. I quickly found out that shade was not going to be my only obstacle in achieving a patch of turf. I knew that the ground was compacted and that the existing ivy would have to be removed in order to attempt growing some grass, but never in my own mind did I think it would be as hard as it turned out to be. I started by using my fathers small little hand tiller. Five minutes into that I knew I was going to have to go bigger, so I rented a larger(but not the largest) tiller. I figured that the area I was trying to till was not that large so I could get away with it. Lets just say I spent most of that 4 hours removing tangled ivy from the blades and barely dented the surface of the ground. I thought I was defeated, but I had torn up just enough ground that I could not go back, so I did some hand clearing of as much of the ivy as I could. After a full weekend and extremely sore hands, I felt I was ready to bring in the big boy and do some real tilling. I guess the third time was the charm as I was able to really get the ground cleared and tilled up nicely. So good in fact that I unearthed about 60 old clay pavers that had obviously been overtaken by years of neglect and ivy. I am happy to report that even though I did not get the grass seed down until later in the fall than I wanted, I am seeing a good amount of green grass growing out there. Hopefully by next summer, I will have a beautiful patch of lawn in the back yard.

What to do with the old pond?

The pond area has been one area that has really confused me design wise. I kept going back and forth on whether or not I wanted to try and bring it back to life or do I completely blow it up and start from scratch with something different all together. The previous owners said the pond leaked pretty badly and so I decided to have a pond expert come over and give me some options before I decided what to do. I quickly realized that returning the pond to its original state would be very expensive, not only up front, but also to run and maintain. We also discussed re working the area to create a pond less waterfall feature that sounds really nice and is much less work, but it is still not cheap and still has maintenance issues. I knew that I wanted to add a small patio with a firepit off the deck, so I decided I would build that first and see what I had left over and put the water feature on the back burner. I am very glad I did as the space really changed more than I thought after constructing the patio. I have also come up with a solution for the remainder of the pond that works for now, but also leaves me the option of working in a pond less water feature in the future. Here is the patio after its construction.

What to do with all this stone?

When cleaning out all the groundcover from the upper patio and wall, I came across a small pile of stone right along the property line. After finishing the plantings on the upper patio, I decided to see how much stone was underneath the groundcover. Well, the stone pile never ended, I just kept finding more and more. So, I needed to find a purpose for all this stone. I knew I wanted to plant some Rhododendrons and Azaleas and with so much clay in my back yard, I thought I could build some fieldstone walls and backfill with great soil so I could indeed plant the plants I wanted. Here is a photo of the largest of 3 walls I built around the property. The other one is on the north property line that hides some old piping from the neighbors house and the other is in the most wooded portion of the yard and will be along the future "woodland" path. I had never built walls with natural stone like this, but I think they turned out really well and very solid. It was like putting together a puzzle with very large and heavy pieces.

Springtime work has started.

Well, I decided to start small. After some cleanup of some scrub trees in the far back of the property, I got to my first plantings of the year. This small bed is on the upper patio and I filled it with some shad perennials including some hostas, yellow and purple coralbells, and some variegated ferns.

The next step was to continue on with some upper patio work. After many hours of cleaning out several different kinds of groundcover I finally had another planting bed to plant. After cleaning up the bed, I found out that the upper patio was about 2 feet wider than I originally thought. As you can see in the lower corner of the pic, I removed 3 large pieces of bluestone to keep the planting bed the size I thought it was and had planned for. This area of the patio, where we have our dining table and grill and is closest to the property line, so I went with a more "formal" hedge look. In the back I went with endless summer hydrangeas, then a boxwood hedge in front of that, and finished that off dark purple coralbells in the front. I am very excited to see how this fills in to create a "wall" around the dining area. This area was the one area I knew exactly what I wanted to do from day one.

The new yard begins!

I am doing some catch up on the blog so I thought I would start off by showing some before pictures of the new house and the yard. These were taken in the spring and before I did anything at all to the yard. As you can see from the pics, I am working with a lot of overgrowth. There is so much english ivy, large hackberries, and honeysuckles. You probably notice the old filled in pond just off the deck. More on that later.......

This time, for real

Well, the new garden is starting to take shape at the new house, but I thought I better give some background of what was here when we bought the house. I won't say the yard was neglected for many years, but the previous owners definitely were okay with letting nature take its course. I think they were a little overwhelmed by the shade and gave up after so many things died. I too and quickly trying to learn a whole new palate of plants as I never really had to deal with shade before either.
There are basically 4 plants that are growing throughout the yard at this point. They are Hackberry trees, Honeysuckle, english ivy, and creeping euonymus. Honestly, 4 plants that do not do much for me or my plans for the garden. Now there are a few worthwhile plants in the yard as well. There is a massive pin oak in the front yard as well as a huge honeylocust and spruce in the back yard. Some of the honeysuckle even have a place around the patio as they make a great canopy over the patio space. I have come to learn already that removing the ivy and euonymus is no easy task and it may be a battle I never truly win. I have started some projects that I will post soon to give you an idea of what I have been up to as well as what I am working with.