I Heart My Frontyard Garden!

Is "frontyard" even a word? Oh, who cares! I'm in love with mine. It's organic, green, and beautiful. But of course, it wasn't always this way. Check out the evolution in pictures... click on the thumbnails for a bigger shot...

When we bought this house in 2002, it had the huge lawn, trees, and a modest little flowerbed under the large picture window. It was nice, well-kept, and fit in with the neighbourhood, but things about it started to bother me:

1: The lawn was too huge. I can think of a thousand better things to do than mow all that grass. Roomie didn't mind mowing it (he was already mowing his backyard domain anyway), but he'd have to his filter mask on (due to allergies) even longer.
And when our city goes through the typical summer dry spells, the grass goes dormant and develops these ugly brown patches. And to me, watering grass is such a waste!

2: The flower bed was too small. Our house is north-facing, and with the flower bed tucked away under the window, it wasn't getting enough light for the kind of flowers I wanted to have.

So, in 2006, with a truckload of wood mulch and newspapers, I smothered the grass. No more grass to mow, water, or maintain! Yippee!
The kids prefer to play in the backyard with their swing set and playhouse anyway, so they didn't complain.

Each year, over the past couple of years, I've spent only $20 in new perennials and soil, expanding the flower beds, improving the old soil with the new, and watering selectively.

I have ornamental grass, yarrow, bergenia, lamb's ears, hosta, snow-in-summer, chrysanthemum, allium, jacob's ladder, ferns, peonia, lily, sweet woodruff, and meadowsweet... oh, and I did get a few annuals for instant colour!

This last shot I took on Saturday after planting the new stuff. It's from a different angle from the shots above. Right now, the flowers in the new garden bed are still too small to see well in pictures, but I'll put up a new updated shot later on in the season. :)

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous27 May, 2008

    Good for you! I think it looks great and can't wait to see the future photos. I'm already planning our new frontyard when we get to florida. There's a grapefruit tree in front already but I want to add some more citrus and an avocado tree and then some flowers and perennials. I hate mowing grass too and feel its a waste to water and cut.
    I heart gardening. :D

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  2. @jami -
    thanks! oh, I wish I could have grapefruit and avocado trees! I so envy! :) I'd love to see what your garden will look like...
    Isn't gardening GREAT?!!! :)

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