landscaping

As I mentioned yesterday, the previous owners of this house left a lot of things behind for us. Some were annoyances that had to be thrown away, but other thing turned out to be some pretty nice gifts.

We have a beautiful and very spacious brick paver patio on the back of the house. It was here when we moved in and it was one of the only parts of the backyard that didn’t need some TLC. As a result of the brick paver installation, the previous owners had a lot of pavers left over, and left them on the side of the house.

Brian and I have been trying to think of a wonderful way to use them, and last weekend on a whim, we came up with the perfect plan.

Between my two raised beds it is a veritable weed trap. It is annoying. Also, after watering it becomes pretty muddy in there, and my shoes are a mess after trying to weed.

This is when we (For the record this is one of those times, when I say “we” I mean I came up with the idea and Brian executed it.) decided to put a small section of brick pavers between the garden beds to cut down on the weeds, and help save my cute new summer kicks.

First, Brian removed any weeds and raked up the soil. He then flattened everything out as best he could by hand. He also put down a good layer of weed killer to help prevent any weeds from growing in between the crevices.

We then started laying bricks in kind of a pattern between the beds. there is only room for 5 bricks between the garden beds so it was not hard to come up with a pattern. Starting from left to right. We started with placing two bricks vertically. Then we placed two horizonally, and then one vertically again.

The next row kind of alternated. We placed two horizontally, one vertically and two horizontally again.

Finally, the third row is one brick vertically, two horizontally, and two vertically.

Once we had a pattern we only had to repeat it one more time to reach the end of the small “walkway.” Also, we tried to mix up the colors a bit for some variety.

I know they don’t seem level in these pictures, but once the pavers were placed I had to put down the camera and start gently tapping them into place.

Once that was done, Brian took the leftover bullet edging from the mulch project a few weeks back and continued it in front of the garden beds.

The whole project only took about an hour, oh and did I mention it was FREE? Thank you previous owners, for leaving some of the things you did.

Voila! No more weeds (hopefully), and no more importantly, no more muddy shoes. I could have gotten a pair of gardening shoes, but I like the pavers better. The little walkway is also a nice place for my pots of herbs.

Also, from these pictures, you can see the vegetable garden is doing pretty well this year. I better get out there and weed the INSIDE of the beds now.

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I will never forget the day we first toured this house. We were so excited to see this house as it was in our “dream neighborhood”. It was a beautiful crisp autumn day. The trees lining the street to our house were every shade of orange, red, and yellow. The house next door had kids jumping in piles of leaves. The sun was shining.

When we first walked into the house, we knew we liked it, but after living in a two bedroom condo for the last few years a large backyard was a big priority for us. We saw the living room and the kitchen, but immediately asked our realtor if we could see the backyard. They opened the patio doors and the boys ran out into the sunshine in the backyard, and started kicking around a soccer ball they had brought. They were in love.

After looking at the rest of the house. So were Brian and I.

The backyard (as well as other landscaped areas of surrounding our house) has undergone some huge transformations since we have moved in two years ago.

When we moved in, we really like the brick paver patio, however there was a huge above ground pool with a rickety deck. Also, there were some trees and shrubs, but there were definitely some areas that were overgrown and needed some TLC.

Brian and I decided to just tackle the yard a little bit at a time.

The first order of business was to remove the pool and deck. Neither were kept up very well, and were not safe. So, Brian tore down the deck and pool.

Next, we had some landscapers come and remove any dead overgrowth as well as sod the area where the pool used to be. They added a little mulch area to add some plants.

Finally, Brian and I also built two raised beds for our vegetable garden. You can read more about how we built them HERE.

We were happy that the pool was gone and that there was plenty of room for the kids to run around, but the yard seemed unfinished.

This year, we decided to add a little more dimension to the backyard and asked landscapers to come back this spring to add some bullet edging and mulch to the entire perimeter of the backyard. Also, they removed some other dead bushes and trees, and added a few other elements such as a two more crab apple trees.

Also, on the side of the house was a huge island that was filled with nothing but some dead bushes and overgrowth.

The landscapers removed everything that was dead, kept the nice flowering tree, and surrounded that area with rocks and bullet edging that is consistent with the landscaping in the front of the house.

There are some other things in years to come that we would like to do, but for now we are happy that we have wide open spaces, a healthy lawn, and some mulched areas to add some flowers.

We’ve come a long way from this:

To this:

I think this weekend, we will celebrate with some s’mores in the fire pit!

Tag

Brick Paver for Beginners

The Backyard in All Its Glory