Friday, April 8, 2011

Rehabilitation of the Front Yard

This month we decided to do a complete overhaul of our front yard. Although it is always full of color in the summer, the winter months have shown us how drab it can be when all of our perennials are hunkering down. We've also needed to add organic matter to the soil so we took this opportunity to accomplish both. First we dug out all of our plants, then turned the soil over and fixed the grade in the areas we were unhappy with.












Above, our garlic patch, the only plants we left in the ground, gets pummeled by a hailstorm.


Next we mixed compost in with our soil, delineated our paths, and topdressed with the compost mixture because it is such a deliciously dark soil.


We decided on a curvy stone pathway, with an area of groundcover in the middle to let us have a place to sit in the summer, but still have lots of dry places to place our feet when collecting herbs in the off months.



Finally we re-planted things, with more thought to location, flower and foliage color & texture, and added evergreens to the mix for some winter interest. Now that the backyard is ready to grow the bulk of our veggies, this front yard will house mostly herbs and ornamentals.





As is typical, this project is not finished yet. But we've done the bulk of the work and the plants are firmly in the ground and ready to fill out the space. I've also put in a lot of annual seed around so we hope to have a lush flower garden by the summer months.





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