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This page is dedicated to showing our improvements (and/or attempts at improvements) in our landscaping during 2008.
First here are some photos of our yard, taken April 26, 2008 ... lots of bare spots, caused by the torrential rains that fell in the weeks following the preparation and seeding of the yard ... just bad luck, really, but now it's going to be a mess to fix without just starting over. The third picture shows the large crevasses that have been worn in the back yard by water coming from the lots up the hill ...
We received some shrubs from my sisters as a housewarming gift ... unfortunately, with our yard in such a shambles we were struggling to find a place to put them where they wouldn't be in danger of being ruined when we redo the yard. On May 25, we planted a pair of Wine and Roses Weigelia plants (one from my sisters and another that we bought to match it) on the SW corner of the house and three dwarf burning bushes on the NE corner.
Update Summer 2008 ... We hired Terry Dye from Longfellow's Nursery in Centertown, MO to give us some landscaping design ideas ... she gave us a lot of things to consider, and we talked to several landscapers before selecting Stockman Landscaping to do the initial work on the retaining walls and planting areas.
Update Nov 19, 2008 ... we've recently had a couple of retaining walls and planting areas installed, and today had three trees planted ... things are starting to take shape ... (orientation notes: the 1st photo below was taken from the SE corner of the house (standing on the corner in the street) looking toward the NW) ...
The big tree on the corner is an Autumn Blaze Red Maple (front and center of 1st photo) which we chose for its awesome fall colors. The little tree in the middle of the planting area is a snow fountain weeping cherry (left center of 1st photo, right side of 5th photo, close-up in 6th photo) ... we chose white because we will have purple or red flowers in other areas and didn't want to clash. The tree to the left of the lower driveway is a Bald Cypress (7th photo), which we selected because we like its shape and "soft" fern-like leaves. You can see from the photos that I still need to wash the lower portion of the house to remove the splashed mud that was deposited prior to the installation of the planting areas. The 8th and 9th photos show the planting areas on the north side and northwest corner of the house ... and as you can see in the background of the 7th photo, I have since re-installed the solar landscaping lights in the planting area along the NE retaining wall.
Future plans ... we expect to spend more time in the evenings on the front porch instead of the deck, because the latter catches a heavy dose of evening sun, so we want to be able to sit on the front porch and enjoy the SE area of the lawn, and that's where we're concentrating our landscaping efforts ... in the upper planting area near the porch (3rd & 4th photos) we're planning some sort of decorative tree (we want a Crimson Queen Japanese Maple, but we're worried that it will not like how much sun it gets there) and a variety of smaller plantings ... in the lower planting area (5th photo) we're planning to put some crape myrtles near the house and a smattering of smaller plants elsewhere ... in the small courtyard area near the front porch (right side of 2nd photo, where the two blue pots are now) we're hoping to put a cool water feature (and perhaps the Japanese Maple if we don't put it in the aforementioned area) ... we won't plant much north of the house, but will put some dwarf burning bushes and dwarf crape myrtles above the NE retaining wall (9th photo) ...