Grow little plants, grow!

Two posts in one day? Gasp!! 

I'm on vacation today (awesomeness), so I get to actually spend some time out in our yard. I'm happy to say that it's coming along slowly but surely. Watching our little baby plants grow has certainly been an effort in patience, which we know I'm short on.

Our landscaper was over yesterday to talk about putting the rest of the landscaping in. He said that everything is coming in great with the exception of a couple plants on the east side of our front lawn that we're going to just sit back and see if they bloom. If not, we'll figure something else out.

We also decided, with his advice, to move our purple ash in the front yard this fall once it goes dormant. When we moved in and had our landscaping installed we didn't have any neighbors, and we didn't know they'd end up staggering the houses (and we're glad they did). So our neighbors house sits closer to the curb than ours. As it turns out, our tree, once it starts growing, will end up messing with their gutters and that's not very neighborly of us to mess with their house. So we're keeping our fingers crossed we can successfully move it to the berm by our sidewalk and move the globe spruce that currently lives there to where the tree currently is.

We also decided to put some boxwood in the front of our house and move our moon shadow euonymus in front of it to create more "heft" in front of our office window.

But getting back to current state. It's been exciting and rewarding watching the yard come in and even though everything is still small and vulnerable, it's wonderful to see green in the backyard. Hopefully by the end of the summer, our neighbors will get their landscaping completed and it will transform our little land of dirt and hay.

While we're still waiting for everything to fully bloom, here's some photos of our yard slowly taking shape.

Looking out onto the yard from our patio

One of our lilacs -- can't wait until these babies produce bigger blooms 

One of our ivory halo dogwood bushes

One of our forsythia bushes. We got to see a little yellow in early spring this year, but it quickly changed to green. 

Our knockout rose bushes and butterfly bush have grown so well in this back corner. It's by far where the most growth has happened this spring.

before & after: landscaping part 2

I have a ton of pictures for this one, so let's dig in.

Starting off where my last post left off, we're turning the corner into our backyard from the east.

The "nook" under our great room windows

With knockout roses, a dwarf butterfly bush and a maiden grass. This is another example of how small our baby plants look.

Looking up at the house

 

After -- can't wait to see how the bushes grow in!

Although not an exact angle from the before, you get the idea

Looking down into the yard

During install - the outline of the patio

Concrete is poured and plants are being installed

After with everyting in. Don't mind our little spot of dirt.

Looking a little west at the other side of the patio

The original covered patio

After with the expanded patio

A great view of our new patio and west side of the yard

On the west side of our house

After with sky rocket junipers and lilac to help provide some privacy

Ta da!

Backyard before



The best view of our backyard. I seriously can't wait to see it in bloom!

 

 

before & after: landscaping part 1

Apologies for being MIA for so long. But I'm back and with my first before and after post!

As I mentioned before, costs aside, we were thrilled to be able to design our own landscaping with the help of the phenomenal B&D Landscaping. As I previewed in my Landscaping Adventures post, we approached landscaping with a lot of excitement ... and a lot of trepidation. Making some very large, expensive decisions before we knew what the neighborhood would look like was intense. Now that it's installed, I think we made some really smart decisions like adding an extra patio and spending more money on the front than in the back.

We also made a couple of questionable decisions. Due to our budget constraints, we had to purchase very young plants. As you'll see in the pictures below, they're teeny. I know that they'll grow, but I wish that we would have found a little more room in our budget to purchase larger, more mature plants so we wouldn't have to wait as long for the yard to take shape.

We still have some additions to make -- we have a ton of perennials being installed in the spring -- but the majority is in and looking great.

Because I've taken so many pictures I'm breaking it into two separate posts, starting with the front yard. So, without further ado ...

West side of house



Before - look at all that dirt!

Halfway through install

Ta da!

There are a couple knock out rose bushes and a dwarf globe spruce

Front of house

Before -- not very welcoming

Looking down the yard

Halfway through install

The finished product!

The area right in front of our front door -- a dwarf butterfly bush and dwarf globe spruce

In front of our office window -- moonshadow euonymus. This is a great example of where more mature plants would have been better

Looking at the far corner of our front yard -- more of the same with some blue mist spirea

 

Looking back into the yard from the east

 

 

East side of house

 

We installed a breezway to have an easy walkway from the front to back

So there you have it. Evan also added some uplighting and lanterns along our entryway. We love it and can't wait to see how it grows and matures.

moving forward

First, thank you so much for the outpouring of love and kindness after my last post. It's been a difficult month for sure and has impacted me a lot more than I thought it would.

 

Beyond our grief, we've been working to turn our new house into our home. Most of our furniture has been delivered and the landscaping has been completed for the season (although there's still more to do in the spring). We're still hanging art and accessorizing, so more on that later. But the landscaping ... it looks amazing!

 

Sneak peek of the front of our house during install

 

I'm glad that we opted to add the extra patio in the back now as we're really able to see how the yard will come together. This past weekend we moved 15 tons of rock and 4 tons of mulch into the front and back yard and Evan installed lighting. The lighting has really made all the difference, especially at night. Around the neighborhood, our neighbors have also been installing landscaping and lighting and I love how everything is coming together. The lighting at night really makes the block look special and it's wonderful to not drive up to a street full of dirt -- helps with that whole "homey" feel. 

 

About half of our 15 tons of rock

 

I've been working to get some good pictures and will do a before and after post soon. And then I can't wait for spring to show what it looks like blooming and growing!!

landscaping adventures

One of the downsides of our community is that landscaping the front and back of our house is 100% our responsibility, unlike some other new communities around Denver where you're only responsible for the backyard. However, once complete, we do receive a small escrow refund, which will barely cover our sprinkles.

The upside is that we're 100% in control of what our landscaping looks like, which is really exciting because in our world, landscaping for the past 9 years has consisted of a small concrete patio, a couple pots and a stinky fence. So, we've wholeheartedly (and quite excitedly) embraced designing our dream landscape.

One of the contingencies of actually receiving our landscaping escrow is to submit a detailed design plan to our community's design review board, which they in turn need to approve. Because we're new to this, we reached out to a couple landscaping companies to help take our thoughts, improve on them and put them down on paper.

What we were unprepared for is the cost of landscaping. It's easily double what we bugeted for, and while we've found some cost savings doing things ourselves, it really isn't that much cheaper to say lay your own sod or plant your own trees. We also weren't prepared for all of the very long-term, expensive decisions that we'd be making. How the hell are we supposed to know where our best views will be when the lots next to us haven't even sold? Our solution is to scale down the number of shrubs where we think there might be a view and add to it down the road once all the houses in our neighborhood are built. So, we're bulking up on landscaping for our front yard, and doing something a little more bare with the back, adding additional patio space and doing what we can to create some privacy.

The company we chose, B&D Landscaping, has been phenomenal to work with. They came up with an amazing plan for our limited (albeit enormous-to-us) budget. But, keeping with the theme of this whole house journey, debated for weeks over which plants we should use, where they should be and if we really wanted to stretch our budget to do things now vs. later.

This is a sneak peak of how our yard looks on paper:

I love it, but have to be honest. I'm a little nervous how it will all look in person. And, I'm still a little nervous about if we really did chose the best/right plants, trees and shrubs. I'm also insanely excited to see it installed. Once we're moved in, I'll take pictures of the progress. For now, I'm content to draw stick figures on the patio and envision it's Evan and I sipping wine while watching the sunset.