Landscaping | It's Great To Be Home

It’s A Jungle Out There

September 29, 2009 By Liz - It's Great To Be Home 8 Comments

Even though I love the idea of flower beds, my husband and I have proved that we should never be entrusted with them. You see, I have an embarrassing secret – our backyard has turned into a jungle.

So here’s how it’s going to go – I’m going to give you a slew of excuses and explanations for the sad state of our backyard and then I’m going to show you the shameful pictures – and you’re not going to judge me. Mmkay, got a deal?

I realized our backyard had gotten out of control when I found myself admiring the lovely dappled light coming in the frosted window in our bathroom. You see, there shouldn’t have been any dappled light because there shouldn’t be any trees outside our bathroom window. This is how that little area of the backyard looked in April (back when we laid some sod):

And here’s how it looked last weekend:

Another area went from this:

to this:

Yeah. There are no words for the disaster that our backyard had become. It’s embarrassing. Who knew our backyard could go back to nature in just a few months? (But in our defense, this area is around the side of the house where we never look. See? I promised you excuses!).

Anyway, last Friday and Saturday we decided to take the first step toward ridding ourselves of this ridiculous eyesore by tearing up the jungle, along with all the random pieces of cement and edging that were sprinkled around. The plan is to replace the flower beds with sod (which we can handle). The area along the house went from this:

to this:

And those jungle-y areas now look a little something like this:

I know, we still have a long way to go before it’s remotely acceptable, but we made some serious progress – hallelujah! You can take a look at all of the jungle debris as proof of our progress:

And the concrete pavers in the pile below were quite a hot commodity – about half of them were gone from the curb after just a few minutes!

We’re hoping to complete the transformation next weekend, so fingers crossed that we get our acts together and make that happen. What about you guys? Are you as appalled by our backyard as I am? Tackle any big projects over the weekend?

P.S. You may have noticed that there’s no Inspiration Tuesday blog party today – I hope that hasn’t thrown you off! There just didn’t seem to be as much interest as I’d hoped, so it’s been retired for awhile – maybe it’ll make a comeback someday! In the meantime, you are still more than welcome to link to your inspiring posts in the Comments section – just be sure to put your link in “quotes” so that it will show up!

Our Flip: Lift Their Skirts!

August 10, 2009 By Liz - It's Great To Be Home 3 Comments

Before we got ahold of it, the front yard at the flip was a hot mess:

The house was barely even visible behind two humongous magnolia trees that totally obscured the roof and most of the exterior – which might have been a good thing, given the not-so-lovely appearance of the house at that time.

And not only were the magnolia trees obscuring the house, they were blocking out so much sunlight with their dense and low-hanging limbs that grass couldn’t even grow over much of the yard – mmm, mud yard – just what everyone wants!

Jason and I knew that the trees were awesome so we didn’t want to cut them down, but we didn’t really know what could be done to (a) let the grass grow, (b) let the house be seen, and (c) let potential buyers mosey up the sidewalk without getting whacked by branches. After we asked around a bit, my aunt came up with this brilliant yet common-sense solution – lift their skirts!! (Her words, not mine!!).

Enter Landscaper Jared – you might remember him from such adventures as Fun With Big Machines and Backyard Oasis. I think it’s only fitting that the Landscaper Jared series gets a third installment, don’t you?

Anyway, Landscaper Jared shimmied right up those ginormous magnolias with a rented chainsaw in one hand and his life insurance policy in the other – kids, don’t try this at home!

Those low-hanging branches didn’t stand a chance!

After we waited a few hours and didn’t hear any sirens, we swung back by the flip and were greeted by this awesome sight:

Have you ever seen so many branches in your entire life? It took three trips to the dump to get rid of that huge pile.

After the magnolias were pruned and the ground was touched by sunlight for the first time in decades, we knew that anything we planted would finally have a chance for survival – no more mud pit!! We trekked over to Home Depot and bought a slew of bushes, plants and flowers – red tip photinas, holly bushes, purple ferns, and impatiens. Once we hauled them back to the house in Landscaper Jared’s truck, we spaced out each plant and flower on either side of the house:

That gave us a chance to eyeball the arrangement and spacing before Landscaper Jared planted all those puppies:

In no time, the front of the flip was looking about a thousand times better. But even though the beds full of ivy were no longer, the front yard was still begging for some new sod:

Landscaper Jared laid about a pallet and a half of St. Augustine over the bare spots in the front yard:

Curious how Landscaper Jared got the grass to curve around the flower beds oh-so-perfectly? I was too, until I spied Landscaper Jared with his secret weapon:

A machete!! Apparently he just gives the grass a few whacks with his trusty machete and he gets a perfect cut every time – man, I wish I had known that when we were laying sod in our backyard!

The lawn has now settled in and is happy as a clam, and the new plantings are looking fab. Have any of you tackled laying sod before? Got any landscaping tips or tricks up your sleeve? Fill us in!

Our Flip: They Can Take The Heat

July 17, 2009 By Liz - It's Great To Be Home 11 Comments

You know that saying, if you can’t take the heat get out of the kitchen? Well, the same thing applies to the backyard at our flip.

That puppy gets H-O-T in the Texas heat, so heat and sun-tolerant plants were a must when we were thinking about landscaping around the pool.

We also had a really cool existing, unidentified palm-like tree that we wanted to work around:

With our requirements for hot ‘n hardy plants that fit in with our funky palm tree, coming up with a tropical, oasis-like landscaping scheme was a no-brainer.

Now that you’ve heard all about how we transformed the backyard, I thought I’d give you the scoop on which plants we picked, and why. Here we go!!

These plants below form the main focal point of the backyard. By choosing plants of varying heights, we were able to break up the large expanse of fence behind the pool, and add some texture and visual interest to keep your eye moving from plant to plant so that you don’t miss a single one of those beauties.

While we wanted the majority of the plants to be green to form kind of a backdrop for the gorgeous pool, I couldn’t resist a few fun pops of color with those giant hibiscus – they had me from hello!

Each one of these tropical plants is tolerant of full-sun (a necessity in this backyard) and lots of heat. The few days a year that Dallas gets below freezing, all the new owner will need to do to keep these plants happy is cover them with a sheet – easy!

We also added a little planting vignette over by the new fence that was constructed to hide the pool equipment from view. Our goal was simply to break up the fence a little bit (a common theme, it seems) and add a little pop of color in another corner of the yard.

So now you know all the nitty gritty about those fun tropical plants hanging out by the pool! The word on the street is that the pool will be ready to swim in this weekend – yippee!! Now, here’s my big question to you guys – does anybody know what the heck that unidentified palm-like tree is over by the pool? I wanna know!!

This post is shared with Hooked on Houses.