Tag: Front Yard Page 1 of 5

When do you start thinking about gardening for the next season? It has become a tradition of mine to plan next year’s garden during the week after Christmas. Usually by this time, I have not touched dirt for a couple months. All I had were indoor plants and dried flowers:

2022 will be our fifth planting season. When we bought this property, it was covered in poorly grown lawn and lots of weeds. Over the last four years, we planted hundreds of perennials and dozens of trees.

The backyard, 2017 summer

The front yard, 2017

The first two seasons on this property were devoted to establishing gardening space. In the Spring of 2018, we converted a big field of weedy lawn in our backyard to a vegetable garden. We also planted a couple perennial flower beds during Spring and Summer.

Veggie garden, 2018 summer

Backyard perennial gardens, 2018 summer

Front yard mailbox garden, 2018 summer

Fruit trees and climbing roses along the back fence, 2018 summer.

We also worked on the front yard, namely converting the northern slope into a big flower bed. It took us a couple months, and we finished just in time for Fall planting.

We enjoyed the new planting so much that we decided to plant more perennials the next year. In the Spring of 2019, we covered a large portion of the backyard with woodchip mulch and planted hazelnut trees and raspberries here.

We also added a small flower bed in the front yard to complete all the planting in the front yard.

All the perennials we planted started filling in pretty well in 2020, and we were happy with the front yard planting. However, the flower beds in the backyard looked patchy, and mowing the lawn among these mulched flower beds was a pain. During the lockdown period, I came up with a good plan for this part of the yard. I first built up the soil around the shed and created a terrace garden:

Then, I pushed the boundary of the raspberry patch further into the lawn, creating a narrow flower boarder of the entire mulched area.

Lastly, I filled all the space left to this flower border with mulch, so we no longer had any lawn to maintain on the northern side of the backyard. Coming around Fall, I planted this wavy flower boarder with peonies and Russian sage, which have grown in very nicely since.

We have yet to pave the shed patio, but the mulched garden space has been thriving.

My second big achievement in 2020 was raising my own seedlings. First it was done as a necessity, but I soon found out that it was not as difficult as I imagined. Most importantly, raising seedlings enabled me to add more varieties of perennials and vegetables without breaking the bank.

I again started my own seed in 2021, which resulted in the best vegetable garden I ever planted. The rest of the 2021 gardening effort went into reviving the lawn. Before winter hit, I covered the north side yard with cardboard and mulch, with the intention to plant a shade garden here in the future.

All of our perennials have been growing like crazy in 2021. I have a feeling that our 2022 garden will be gorgeous! We will focus on maintenance and fine-tuning the flower beds in 2022, and of course raising my own seedings and planting a big vegetable garden is a must. I also ordered two new climbing vines – a passion flower and a pink clematis called “Josephine”. We had passion flower vine before and really enjoyed their big tropical looking flowers. I hope to grow it next to the mailbox so our neighbors can enjoy it too.

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Although I won’t actually start seeds until April, it comforts me to having figured everything I need to do and having everything ordered. Are you also looking forward to the next season of gardening? What is your garden plan for 2022?

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I wrapped up my garden clean-up last weekend and would like to share my Fall yard with you. I am still fairly new to gardening – only planted my first garden in 2018. But I read a lot about ways of gardening before I started. It is fair to say that I acquired my gardening skills through authority instead of empiricism.

My first garden bed in 2018:

Vegetable beds , 1st year:

Over the last three seasons, I gained a lot more experience and my intuition started to grow. I can finally tell whether a plant is happy, what it might need, and I have accepted that each plant has its own personality (e.g. the way they like to grow). It is important, for me at least as a gardener, to stop forcing a plant to grow into something I think it should be like, but letting it grow to what it wants to be.

Below is my 1st flower bed in this Spring. Some annual flowers have gone and now it is a herb garden:

The vegetable patch this summer:

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A fuller garden also means more lives. Pollinators, insects, and resident bunnies!

Bunny No. 1

Bunny No. 2

As my knowledge accumulated, my confidence also grew. This season, I started moving plants around – relocating unhappy plants, switching plants within the same flower bed based on their growing habit and desired view. Fine toning the garden beds, or what I call “fluffing” the garden made me felt like a real gardener for the first time.

Moving perennials out of the herb garden

My garden “fluffing” started in the pollinator/herb garden. We used to have an old tree stump here, which was hard to remove. I asked Slav to cut the stump flush with the ground, then planted this garden on top of it. Everything here are native, drought-tolerate plants that are pollinator magnets:

The saying about perennials “the first year they sleep, the second year they creep, then the third year they leap” could not be more true. By the end of 2020, the whole bed was already too full:

A full garden offers many benefits – less weeds, more insects, and almost no need for watering. However, taller plants also shade the ground around them, and I found the English lavenders and lavender cottons started to struggle. Last Fall, I transplanted the trio of English lavender to the patio garden. And this Fall, it is time to save the lavender cottons.

I dug out all three of them, and transplanted them into the front yard. This spot used to have three larkspur, which are very pretty plants, supposedly. But they did not like this location and I did not like their look. So out they went. The front yard offers better sunlight and drainage. I am sure that the lavender cottons will create a really cute low mound of flowers here in spring. Their silver color and yellow little flowers should look nice next to the green dwarf pine and blue grasses.

Speaking of blue grasses, I also relocated one Blue Grama grass. Blue Grama grass is Colorado’s state grass and I am proud to have three of them. They were planted in a line initially, along the edge of the lawn, but the one on the very right has been competing with other plants for water and is visibly smaller. So I moved it for just a few feet, replanted it in front of other two grasses.

Dividing plants in the herb garden

The second plant I took care of in the herb garden was the Red Hot Poker. The variety I have is called “flamenco“, which flowers in three colors (yellow, orange and red) in a gradient. The flowers look like candy cones and very cool. This grass was used a lot in the median strip on our local streets, which speaks for their toughness.

You can see it in the middle of the picture above – this was when they first emerged in May. By mid-summer, the grass became a beast.

Can you see it behind the catmint “walker’s low”? Being its fourth Spring, it stopped flowering, and started to flop from the center. I cut it back, divided it into many parts, and planted a trio in its original location:

Another clump went under the transparent apple tree:

I also planted a big clump behind the ginkgo tree. Ginkgo is famous for its slow-growing habit, so I do not think my ginkgo stick will reach to an appreciable height anytime soon. At the mean time, I want something taller as a backdrop:

After moving the plants out, I cut back some low-mounding herbs that have spilled out of the flower bed:

Now we can see the edging and path again! I know that this bed still looks very wild. But I intend to keep it this way for winter. Dead crowns not only protect the roots over the winter, but also provide nesting place for insects/eggs and small mammals. We will cut all the dead and broken back next May, after the danger of hard frost passes.

Cutting back irises

One plant I do cut back every Fall is iris. Their leaves are too unsightly to look at during winter, and having snow sit on the leaves often cause rot. I have most of my iris in the front yard along the dry creek. Cutting the leaves back revealed the shape of dry creek again:

I planted hens-and-chicks and sedum along the dry creek. After cutting back the tall iris leaves, they finally got some winter sun:

Season of Fall colors

This year we had the best Fall colors in our yard, probably due to the mild October we had. There has not been any snow, not even strong wind. So all the trees and perennials have had the opportunity to reach their fullest Fall color. It is truly a magnificent view:

Front yard flower bed:

“Shenandoah” switch grass

Sedum “Autumn joy”

Mock orange “Snow White Sensation”

“Berry Poppins” winterberry

The honey suckle (second year)

And here is how my backyard looks now:

Ash trees above the garden shed:

Peony (all 11 of them!)

Russian sage plants are still flowering:

Chinese Snowball Viburnum (second year):

The ginkgo tree (second year):

The asparagus patch:

And last but not the least, our beloved crabapple tree:

Don’t you just love the colors? We are so fortunate to live in Colorado where we could appreciate all four seasons. Wherever you are, I hope you are enjoying the Fall as well!

Spring used to be the season I looked forward to the least because of my love of snow, but gardening has changed that. I now enjoy coming home not in dark, still having an hour of day light to walk around the yard. Watching new life emerge from the soil is confirming and comforting, and nothing beats the excitement of seeing the first flower of the year.

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The first wave of blooms are hellebores. I planted them in the Spring of 2019, and they have been establishing themselves for the past two years. I kept reminding myself that hellebores need time to establish. And this Spring, my patience has paid off! All the hellebores were loaded with buds as soon as they peeked out of the snow, and they have been flowering non-stop since March.

Look what a show they’ve put on:

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During the months of March and April we had quite a few heavy winter storms. As soon as the snow melted, the herb garden woke up:

Last Spring I transplanted some periwinkle from a neighbor’s yard. I did not know if I would like them or not, but there were lots of nasty weeds spreading into my yard from our neighbor’s on the North, so I had to come up with a tough groundcover to plant against the fence as a “weed barrier”. These periwinkles grew quickly and by this Spring, they have already completely covered the strip of land against my neighbor’s fence! And they bloom the cutest dense mat of blue glowers!

One big landscape project last year was the patio garden. I love it as a soft border seperating the beautiful lawn space and the more practical raspberry patch. I planted some peonies here last Fall, who have come up and look very healthy:

Next to the peonies are the patio planter boxes I built last Spring during the lockdown, which houses our strawberry plants:

Behind the patio garden is the berry patch I planted in 2019.

Next, the shrubs are all doing well! We inherited a lilac bush, which got a rejuvenation cut a couple years ago when we removed the chain link fence it grew into. It is still on its way of recovery, so we do not have flower this year – but it is OK! The service berry bush was loaded with flowers thanks to all the rain we got recently. And I am looking forward to harvesting service berries for the first time this year!

We have quite a few trees on our property. The crabapple tree in the middle of the backyard has put on a spectacular show thanks to the trim and deep fertilizing treatment we gave it last year:

All our fruit trees but one came back this Spring and started to bud up:

What we lost was a nectarine tree. It snapped during one of the heavy storms last Spring. We planted a cold-hardy pear tree at its place just a few days ago:

I also planted a couple ornamental trees. One of them is a Chinese snowball viburnum. It gave us exact one flower last year. 🙂 I am hoping for more this year!

The most exciting tree I have planted on our property is a gingko tree. I was told that it grows very slowly. However, it has grew 8 inches last year and came back happily:

I adore the tender gingko leaves. Aren’t they cute?

We will be planting the vegetable garden in the next a couple weeks and I will surely come back with more detailed update. Here are the garlic and asparagus beds looking lush today:

That is pretty much the backyard! Moving onto the front yard, the perennial flower beds have a few blooms already:

The western sandcherry:

The dwarf pine and sedums:

The irises by the dry creek showed the first few flower buds:

The sedum and honey suckle in the front yard planter:

Hens and chicks thriving in the tiny cracks between the retaining wall and the sidewalk:

This is truly the best our garden has ever been. It looks so lush, healthy, and full of life that it literally stops our neighbors on their tracks. I think the labor and sweat we put in during the past three years has finally paid off!

Happy Spring, everyone!