Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Front Garden Progress!

So, I've been meaning to work on our front gardens since we moved in to our house over two years ago. The first spring we lived here was spent painting/re-doing a lot of indoor projects, so we never got around to working on the gardens. 
The front gardens had nothing in them but WAYYY overgrown bushes. So, last spring we decided to take those bushes out (no big deal right *rolls eyes*) and replace them with a lighter leafy-er plant that wouldn't be so big and overbearing. Well, last spring, right after cutting the bushes off and attempting to remove the stumps, we realized that the roots were MUCH bigger/deeper than we had thought. With them being right next to the house we couldn't burn the stump/roots. 
So, while trying to decide how to get them out, our little Jack decided to try to come 2 months early, which put me on complete bedrest, and meant John now had to work full time, and take care of me and everything in the house. So... no gardening was done last year either.

This year I was motivated to get it done. 

I first spend about 3 hours digging around the stumps to reveal some of the roots (one side of the house has much more sun than the other so one side was easier to dig out a bit, and the other side was a lot harder).




We then planned to use a chainsaw to cut the big roots that were showing, and a pick axe to get the rest, however, the first 3 times when we planned on working on this in the evening after work, it would rain and look like this...


 so, that kept delaying things! 

Then John sprained his ankle, which delayed things even more (I've never used a chainsaw, and I tried using the pick axe and it was definitely a job for a big strong man :-p).

Finally, John felt that his ankle was strong enough to work on it, and we had a saturday with nice weather, so we went outside to work on it.

John spent about 12 hours working on the two stumps, alternating between the chainsaw and pick axe. I did not envy him the job. 
While he was doing that, I was digging out around the other side to try and help reveal more of the roots...

(this picture shows what the root ball looked like after hours of chopping and cutting)

 (again, hours into the work)

(my boys hanging out, taking a quick break)


Finally, after we were outside all day, the root balls came out and we could start working on the ground.



 After filling in the ground and tilling the dirt, and adding some top soil I was finally able to plant! (I am not an experienced gardener, so by this point I just did what I thought would work and I'm hoping it'll grow/fill in well :-p)






And here are some pictures of the finished garden!
The back is a nice hydrangea bush that should grow to about 3 ft square. Next to that is a fern, in the front are some pretty leafy flowers that should fill in as a nice low ground cover, and to the left by the porch is lady's mantle, which should fill in like a small bush in front of the porch.

I can't wait to see how it all looks filled in, and if it turns out how I'm hoping it'll look. We'll see! :) Either way, it looks better than the stumps we had sitting there in yucky clumpy dirt! 

Hopefully later on, when it fills in better I'll have an update picture that looks great! We'll see! ;)