The most important things in life aren't things! Faith*Family*Friends

Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Low Water Landscaping

The large landscape bed to the right of my front door had a large hedge. 

And not much else.  

It was difficult to grow anything on the sidewalk side of the hedge because the hedge blocked most of the spray from the irrigation.  I decided the hedge must go.

As often happens, the hedge and ugly plants were gone before I even thought about taking a photo for my blog.  So I started searching for a before photo and what I found is that it was so ugly I never took a picture of just this area.  

I finally found this one - focus on the area to the right of the front door as you look at the house.  See the hedge?  Not too exciting. Especially in this winter photo.



I also found the picture below from a couple years ago.  The picture is of the flowers (which were amazing that spring). The hedge looks a little better in the spring photo than in the winter one above, but still.....blah.





After many years of hand watering a few plants on the sidewalk side of the hedge through the summer, I came up with a plan.

A project if you will.    

And I hired someone to remove the hedge.  

And then we worked and worked.

And now it looks like this.


Thankfully, SuperDave hauled all those bags of crushed granite for me.

And dug the holes for the large plants.  


I carried every rock you see 
except for the ones that were too heavy for me to lift.  
I even recruited the baby girl's boyfriend for some heavy lifting 
to get this project finished up.


I was seriously sore for several days after I moved these rocks 
from other locations around our yard to this location.  

Yard work is hard work.

North Texas where we live has been in drought conditions the past few years and we are under serious water restrictions.  So this low water landscape is a good choice for our area.

I stood back and admired my work. A few hours later I would go out and look again.

And as I admired by finished project I saw this.  

Sprouts.  

Yaupon Holly Sprouts.

Bazillions of them.  

I hate these things.



There were also a several (dozen) volunteer trees.  Elm, Red Oak, Chinese Pistache, Pecan. The squirrels stay very busy in our neighborhood.  I'm sure some are just due to the wind spreading seed, but I blame the squirrels for all of them.

Here it was, a virtual jungle, right next to my new landscaping.
(I had been working so hard I hadn't even noticed)

So SuperDave and I spent another day working on the front yard landscaping. 

But it was totally worth it.



We spend at least two days a year (about every 6 months) dealing with the sprouts. Except for the sprouts, the rest of the landscape is pretty easy.  This time we cut them really good and put down fabric and lots of mulch.


It looks awesome now - I'm hoping it stays that way for at least a year.


Because I need to float in the pool and read a few books this summer.


Once again, one thing led to another. But eventually we got it done. 

Summer arrived big time this week in North Texas, so hopefully, the yard projects are completely finished until Fall....or next Spring.

Much Love and Laughter.

Laura


  Follow Me on Pinterest