Spring is Here!

Over the past couple of weeks, spring has tempted me once again. I have attended 2 lawn and garden shows in the last 2 weeks. The first, which was in Kansas City, was pretty nice. Not a lot of actual plants for sale, but there were some nice displays and I was able to find a few nice pieces of garden art that I am excited to get out in the yard. The second was located in Topeka, and was smaller but still nice. I thought the displays were a little better than the KC one, but unfortunately I left empty handed.

I also started some seeds indoors and low and behold, I have some small seedlings starting to show up. This is my first time ever trying plants from seed, so I am excited to see if I can do it correctly.

Hang on everyone! We are getting closer to spring.

Woohoo!!! I am famous (not quite)

This past fall, I was fortunate enough to meet a women who writes for the local newspaper and she thought it would be fun to do an article on me and the work I have done in my yard. If you click on the link, you will be able to read the story and also check out the photo gallery as that has the most up to date pictures of the yard.

http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2007/aug/09/man_some_land/

On to the plantings

After finishing up the Patio and Deck, it was time to move onto the best part, PLANTS!! And lots of them. As you will see in the pics, I layed out the beds and the turf and then proceeded to start planting all my favorites. Here you go,enjoy!

New Patio and Deck work has begun

After getting all the weeds and dead plants removed I decided to start on doing some of the "hardscapes" that I wanted to do for the yard. My father came down and helped me with the deck and then I moved onto the stone patio.

The first picture is of the firepit. The next picture shows the seating area and walkway to the garage. I went with a tumbled paver and wall stone to give the patio an aged feeling to it. I also used limestone(not shown) for the caps to the column.

First plants planted!!

When spring hit last year, I just could not wait to get ready to plant. So I was probably the first person at the nursery and bought a "Fat Albert" Blue Spruce and a Star Magnolia. Here they are.

Work Has Begun!

In my previous post, I showed a few pics of what the yard looked like before I started to do any work. This next will show some of the first work that I did.

Most of the early work was cleanup and repair work. I powerwashed the entire fence to get all the old paint off of it. I also had to make the tough decision to remove the giant cottonwood tree. It was a very messy tree and all those large limbs over the house made me nervous with these kansas winds. Having it taken down was a blessing in disguise, because literally the day after it was removed, we had a "microburst" come through town and it took out some huge trees in my neighbors yard, and surely the cottonwood would have probably met the same fate, only probably into my living room.

I also removed a smaller pear tree that was planted way to close to the foundation of the home. I then removed and saved the old clay pavers that made up the small existing patio. I also took out the gas light pole and built a column around it instead.

Before Pics of my yard.

I thought I would start of my blog by letting everyone see what I was starting with.

This is a view of the back yard. As you can see the fence is in really bad shape, the pre-fab concrete steps are uneven and unsafe! The paver patio is small and very overgrown, and the large cottonwood has about 5 huge branches over my roof and the neighbors.

This is the front of our house. Again, the garden here was in pretty rough shape. There are some nice boxwoods up by the porch, but other than that, most of the plants are overgrown and out of place. You can also see a gas lamp up near the public sidewalk. You may also notice by the color of the house that the previous owner loved the color purple, so many of the plants that were here were in shades of purple or pink. I won't even go into what the house looked like inside, but lets just say I did not realize that there were so many different shades of the color purple.

Even though the house was in a little bit of rough shape, both my wife and I fell in love with this old house (built in 1869) immediately. We both wereable to see past all the bad and see this little old houses true potential.

So there you have it, a brief look at my house before I was able to get my hands on it;)

In my next few posts, I will show you what I have been able to accomplish in the year and a half that we have lived here. I hope that you all enjoy.

Welcome to my Blog!

I have never done a blog before but work is slow and my spring fever is high, so I thought this might be a way to keep my mind occupied.

For those of you who do not know me, here is a little background on me. I am a Landscape Architect that graduated from Iowa State University. Over the past 7 years I have worked in several different fields within Landscape Architecture, but fell in love with the residential aspect of the profession. I work for a design build firm in the western suburbs of Chicago, but live in Kansas, and love what I do.

Recently my wife and I bought our first home and now have the pleasure of practicing what I preach, which I am finding is harder than I realized.

Hopefully with this blog I will be able to post not only my successes in my first garden, but also my mistakes. I plan on posting pictures and letting everyone know how things are going, both good and bad.

Thanks for checking my blog out, and I hope you all come back soon.