Backyard Flower Garden Project 1 Update!

Project 1 is in 'semi-complete'.  I will explain. In Project 1 I  (and sometimes Jeremy and Cole) completely tore apart and fixed one huge flower garden. The steps seemed easy enough but considering my first blog on this particular project was on April 9th it ended up a much larger project than I first thought.

So what I have finished took around 6 weeks. It may have been finished in a couple weekends but considering I work full time, have baseball 3 nights per week and celebrated Memorial Day, plus Mother's and Father's Day in that time frame I'm pretty happy! We added a few new plants, a few decorative touches and I am now in love with my #1 Garden.

My goals and achievements are as follows:

* Remove mulch. Has created a huge mold problem. (weird colors)

- Removed and replaced! We found an organic mulch that replaced the old moldy mulch. Looks much nicer and will be easy to maintain. May have to add more next year... will depend on a different project.

*Remove landscaping material and replace with newspaper. (material is ripping, visible and pieces are blowing into our pond and woods)

- Landscaping material wasn't as bad as first thought. Once all the mulch was removed I noticed there was a lot of material in good condition.  Some material was removed and some was repinned down. I added 3-4 layers of newspaper underneath the new mulch to cut down on weeds. Has been working great, only a few smallish weeds have managed to poke through.

*Decide what material to use to replace the mulch. (rocks?)
- Mulch it was!

*Identify current flowers and plants, learn how to maintain.

- My Grandma was over and identified a couple of the flowers for me... I have since forgotten. Hoping to get a book from the library so I can label everything, maybe in August!

*Possibly add rhubarb(?)
- Decided against this. Will add rhubarb at some point to the vegetable garden so it's fenced in and away from the critters. 

 

Projects stemming from Project 1:

* Maintain, maintain, maintain

* Photograph
* Add more perennials. I would rather see flower and plants than the mulch, just a preference.

* Add landscaping stones to surround the garden, front and back. This will cut down on the grass growing up/into the garden on the edges. Stones will also protect the mulch from the lawn mower. I don't want it to start looking 'messy' after all the work that went into fixing it!

*Project 11 - refinish decorative birdhouses. A few of these are in Project 1 and will complete the look of the garden.



Before: West Corner

After: West Corner



After: West Corner

 

Before: Middle



After: Middle



After: Middle



  

Before: East Corner

 

After: East Corner

 

After: East Corner