Recreating the Front Gardens
We have some before photos of our front garden. It got so overloaded with perennials that I could not even put a spade or a garden fork in the soil last year even after a good soak. So we have decided to make raised beds and put in some very low maintenance shrubs.
The battle begins . . . where to start? Last fall we put landscaping fabric over the front beds to try to kill most of the tangled mass of perennials. A great deal of plants pushed through the fabric as strong as ever. Bob pulled off the fabric and we both analyzed the gardens. I have a tree that has lovely little yellow flowers in the spring (I can’t think of the name of it at this time) in the middle of one of my gardens. Bob put a pulley type thing on it and attached the other end to his truck to hall out the tree (yes he did cut around the root ball first). After several attempts of pulling the tree and stopping and readjusting the pulley (I am on the tree end trying to make this as painless as possible for this tree) we finally get it out and re-planted it in the front bank among bigger, stronger trees ~ I hope it will be happy and healthy there. In this order Bob did a clear cut with the weed eater and I raked out the mess. Bob got his big tiller going and began to cut the mass of plants – no kidding – it was just crazy, then I raked out that mess – talk about huge, tight balls of roots. Then Bob tilled with my little garden tiller – you got it – I raked out more plant mess. Then I tilled with my little tiller and yes raked again. Bob then measured and cut the ties and placed them down. Then we called it a day . . . outside anyways. Dinner still has to be made, laundry brought in off of the clothes line. I am ready to move into a little house with a little yard. Enough of this crazy spending every weekend all spring long doing back breaking yard work!
Tomorrow Bob will secure the ties with very long nails. We will put in some soil from our tilled back field and let it settle for a week or so. I am going to research about low maintenance, sun loving, tall shrubs.
After the shrubs are planted we will fill in the gaps with wood chips. The front gardens will then be on their own.