Complete Landscaping

Since we're in the dead of Winter right now, I thought I'd post a Summer project. Late this Summer I finished all of the landscaping that was on my list.

Here's a reminder of the way the landscaping looked when I bought the house. At best it can be described as non-existant, at worst: a disaster.

 The yard (or the house for that matter) really hadn't been taken care of in a long time.

 The South side was pretty over grown with trees and scrappy looking bushes.

 One of the trees in this picture was cut down and used as a Christmas tree my first year in the place.

 Those bushes in the front were totally demolished when the contractor redid the windows and roof, which took place in January of 2010!

My plan was to clean all this up, plant some decent bushes, and get some river rock surrounding the place.

All of the rock beds were dug down 4", deeper in many places to help keep water away from the house. All told I hauled over 12 yards of river rock in my old 1988 Ford F150, two yards at a time!

The grass is still a bit spotty in places due to the tree cover, plus I think it's a big waste of water to run sprinklers.

 All off the large rocks that I used for decorative features were found around the property. It didn't make sense to spend hundreds of dollars on decorative yard statues and such when a little imagination could solve the problem for free-ninty-nine!

 The pic above was dug really deep, to account for water/drainage issues. This house sits low on the property, and I sunk a few yard drains under all those rocks before filling it in.

Same goes for the next two pics, there are yard drains under all of these sections too.

 On the right hand side in this pic you can see where I removed the miserable looking planter bed, and just planted grass over it. It was just coming up when I took this picture.

 I added the yard light. I pulled a wire over from the new garage I built.

 The section right in front of this pic was dug very deep, and had a yard drain put in. This was to keep water off the house during crazy heavy rains, or the Spring thaw. I haven't had any issues with water since I got the gutters and did all this trench work.

 Here's a little design I made under the upstairs deck.

I hooked up the shed to match the house. I ran out of decorative stones for the moment, but will have some more when I move the planter bed that's by the firepit.

 The pavers were put in there because I leave tomato pots there in the Winter months.

This deck section was dug really deep, although the gutters really solved the issues that were going on back here when I bought the place.

 The little gargoyle there was a gift I got once upon a time, and that sat in the basement until I decided to use it for this.

 I removed almost all the trees and bushes in this area. There are only the two in the picture above left.

Here's the design on the left

 This one is on the right.

 Lastly, the front of the house.

All told, I probably threw a million shovel loads of rocks during this project. As you can see though, it's a completely different place than it was when I bought it! Many of the neighbors have come over and thanked me for cleaning this place up!