The Front Yard

Having a yard is a lot of work. That's why I am glad our front yard is only 140 square feet. It definitely requires some sweat to keep it from looking like a jungle, but it is very manageable.

Our front yard has gone through a couple of transformations. When David moved in, the yard was mulched with a few plants. Our neighbor mentioned that yard was really overgrown while the house was vacant and so a couple of people in the community got together to pull all of the weeds. David found out that we live on a high water table, meaning the water sits in the clay and doesn't drain quickly, therefore plants, mostly weeds, thrive and grow even faster.

Garden when David moved in.

David left the yard alone when he first moved in as there were a lot of more pressing projects inside the house. The thing is, when you leave a yard alone, it quickly becomes overgrown. Weeds grew through the mulch and covered the yard.

Garden in Spring 2013.

The next Spring, David ripped out all of the weeds. It took him a lot of back-breaking work to get rid of all of the plants. He used a pick and axe to get down to just dirt and then he added several bags of new soil.

It takes a lot of work to get the yard bare.

David had plans to make a garden with three beds and gravel in between to prevent any weeds from growing.

David's blueprint.

David outlined two boxes that were 3 feet by 2.5 feet and a larger box that is about 4.5 feet by 10 feet with some plywood.

Outlining the beds.

I came in to help with the less physically demanding tasks. We filled the entire yard with weed barrier and doubled up on the barrier in the boxes. We poured sand in the sections outside of the boxes and filled any gaps with sand to prevent weeds from having any space to grow.

We topped the area outside the boxes with stone and gravel and planted dwarf boxwood plants in one of the small boxes and the larger box. In order to get the bushes in the soil, we had to cut small holes in the weed barrier to plant the boxwoods. David's plan was to create a french type of garden with the bushes that are symmetrical and touching.

 

We filled the area between the two small boxes with a garden bench that my mom was getting rid of. 

In the other small box, I made a small herb garden and planted some cilantro, basil, oregano and parsley.

My herb garden from last year.

Our garden looked nice last summer (unfortunately, I don't have a picture of the bigger bed), but we learned that our dwarf boxwoods would only grow about an inch a year so it would be decades before the bushes would grow to be touching with the way we had them spaced out. We wanted to add a plant in the middle of the bushes, but never got around to doing it last year.

Trying to recreate the Gardens of Versailles, unsuccessfully.

After the rough winter, a couple of the boxwoods died and resilient weeds were growing right through the weed barrier all over the yard.

Garden coming out of Winter 2015.

This Spring, we weeded the garden. Turns out we have a lot of spring onions growing randomly. We decided to put lavender in the middle of the boxwoods to add some color. I've read that lavender also helps repel mosquito, but we will see. We bought pre-grown lavender and transplanted it into the garden. At the moment it is just green, but I am hoping the flowers will bloom eventually. We still need to replace some of the boxwoods that did not make it through the winter. 

Garden with Lavender planted.

Small lavender plants and dwarf boxwoods.

We had plans for an herb/vegetable garden elsewhere, and so David wanted to keep the front yard to strictly plants. One thing on our list is to plant bigger boxwoods in the small beds. David also plans to build a little shed to hide the trash and recycling bins that we keep in the front yard.

Weeds are already growing back, and so this garden will be a never ending project, as garden tend to be, but it's exciting to watch the progress. I'm happy that on our small city plot we can have a little bit of vegetation.