Huge landscaping post. Lots of before and after pics.

FIRE PIT BEFORE AND AFTERS

This is the before pic. of my fire pit area

Fire pit after

 

fire pit after pic from a different angle

FOUNDATION BEDS BEFORE AND AFTERS

This is the foundation bed in the front of my house

Front foundation bed after

Side view of the front planting bed

front side foundation bed after

 

back foundation bed after

side foundation bed after

more side and back planting bed afters

FRONT ENTRY

front entry

MORE BACKYARD PLANTING BEDS

backyard planting bedanother view of a backyard bed

 BACK DECK

back deck

MORE FLAGSTONE PATHWAY BEFORE AND AFTERS

This is the site for a stepping stone path.

stepping stone path after

Cross scupture before picture. This shows the area before any flagstone or boulders were placed.

cross and pathway after

 VARIOUS

Before picture of a special area in front yard

special front area after

woodland forest area and path before. This was all lawn a couple days ago. There will be a flagstone path and plantings added to make a nice area under the forest canopy

PROJECT IN PROGRESS:  THE DECK!

Here is my truck full of the plantings that will go in pots on my deck. I am working getting the deck to be an extension of my little landscaping kingdom

Before and After shots of Leyland Cypress back yard screening

 Can’t remember if I showed these pics yet, but here it goes.  The back property line behind my  house has been transformed into a very nice planting bed for trees and shrubs.  There used to be about 30 Arbovitae on the property line and grass right up to them.  Now there is Leyland Cypress, Vine Maple, and Fire Maple.  No shrubs yet

This is a special Gold Variety of the Leyland Cypress

 

 

This shows the property behind my house. You can also see some of the trees that used to be in this planting bed. It is all redone now.

The golden leyland cypress is now planted between two transplanted leyland cypress. I also removed an alder and two pine trees that you can see in the before pictures.

 

 

This is another view of the leyland cypress screening in the back after transplanting. There are four leyland cypress, One golden Leyland, two vine maples, and three fire maple on the back property line now. This is just to the right of my fire pit.

A little late, but worth the read/look!

 This pic was taken last summer when I started my landscaping project.  As I have said before, I removed enough lawn to reduce my mowing time by 1.5 hours.  The pic below was taken after I used a sod cutter to remove the lawn and then I rolled it up.  After that, I had to load a tractor with the rolls and move it to another giant heep of landscape refuse.  I was all happy about removing the sod but once I got it to this point I got serverely over taken with anxiety because the job was just to huge.  I did it though.  The picture below is the former view of the screening bed on the property line between me and my neighboor.  Removing the sod gave the lawn and bed a very nice informal flowing shape.  By the way, those rolls weigh around 60 lbs each.  It took me about a week to remove all the rolls from all the sod that I cut.  This picture shows only about half of the sod that I removed but it is a great demonstration of the vast amount of rolled sod.

 So below is the pic I put up the other day.  This was taken from pretty much the same view point as the above pic.  What a difference it made.  Along with the beautiful trees I will plant several Osier Willows, Red and Yellow twig dogwoods, and lost of Spireas.  I will leave most of the shrub plantings to wait until fall because I have no way to easily water this area at the moment.  It is to far from the house to water by hand.  The trees will be fine but the shrubs would need more careful watering.

 

10 ft. cedars are now planted.

The re-birth of my landscaping obsession! Hardscape, planting beds, and design oh my!!

This is my back lawn with additional flagstone paths that I built coming off the deck and through the trees on the right.

As many of you may have noticed, I have been blogging about my landscaping efforts.  I have a love-hate relationship with my yard.  I have been living in my home now for almost one year.  Since in my mind the landscape is an extension of myself and the interior living spaces, I made sure that the home that we purchased had magnificent potential in this area.  I even started getting the landscape design done prior to moving in.  The winter is passing by now and my desire to be outside working on my yard is growing at a fast clip.

I know that for this blog, landscaping is off-topic.  I have considered creating another blog specifically for my landscaping pics and improvements.  I have decided not to do this because having one blog takes more time than I would have ever imagined and I don’t want to take up precious mind space with another blog.

So fortunately or maybe unfortunately, I am going to be posting my landscaping efforts on Run4change.  Inspired by my wonderful blogging friend Angela, I have realized that life improvement is a complicated web that works it’s way into all areas of life.  So landscaping is for me.  It is an area that I improve my peace, improve my sense of accomplishment, and improve the overall access to the beauty of life.  I am not changing directions with this blog at all, I am just letting you all know that I will be doing additional postings on landscaping.  I hope that you all enjoy them as they are just an extension of the guy who lost 130 lbs.  I never worked in the yard for even one minute a week prior to losing weight so this is a huge victory for me.  I am using the weight loss benefits in a practical way to improve my surroundings.

Here is what I plan to do in my yard this spring/summer:

• Finish planting the last three new trees and re-planting a couple that I need to transplant.
• Move a 1500 pound stone table just ten feet away from its current location (This magnificent table came with the home)
• Finish the flagstone patio and fire pit (This will go where the stone table currently resides.  The link is a pic of what I might want)
• Finish around 300 more feet of stepping stone pathways.
• Begin establishing planting around my home in the foundation beds
• Improve the drainage of my lawn to get ready for yet another rainy season
• Improve the irrigation system and allow it to cover all new planting beds.
• Make all trees not needed for my plan to give them away for free to people who need them for their own plans
• Build my cross sculpture in the back yard and design a nice seating area next to it.

That is all I can think of right now.  I am sure there is more but I am also sure that I won’t even get all of the items above done.  That will be ok with me since I am considering this a long term plan.  If I just keep at it, like with weight loss and ultras and marathons, I will get to the finish line.  At that time and place, my thankful heart will abound with joy.

Big ‘ol trees planted. Moving on to next phase.

10 ft. cedars are now planted.

Ok, I just saw this picture on my wifes blog.  She is so awesome a taking outdoor pictures.  I knew she took them and I had planned to steal them from her but I did not know that she blogged about the yard yet this week.  So I used my high tech theivery to get it on my blog.  I am always jealous of her blog because I think it is sooo cool.

Anyway, the trees are in.  This if four out of the six that I planted as a privacy screen.  The flower bed that they are in will container other shrubs that will be around 6 ft. wide by 6 ft. tall mature hieght.  This will add more screening yet not overwhelm the yard with trees and shade.  The planting bed itself is about 200 feet long so it will take a lot of calorie burning work to fill it.

I have three trees to plant and they will be here by Wednesday.  I also have a couple of trees that I must dig up and move to other locations to make it all flow well.  The transplant will be the harder ones.  They take more digging and more time.

So there you go for my little landscaping up-date.

Best of both worlds.

As the good weather comes in, I am going to be burning some extra calories and getting fit in new ways with the help of my yard.  That’s right, landscaping.  I have a pretty big yard and a landscape plan that encompasses all of it.  It has been requested by some that I post pics of the work that I am doing so every now and then I will do so.  Today is one of those days.  I know it is a bit off topic but the simple fact is that yard work is fantastic for our bodies and it produces a result that improves our lives and the communities that we live in.  So having a nice yard doesn’t just affect me, it affects all the people who see it.  It has the potential to bring peacefulness and inspiration to those who pass by or visit.  This is not about impressing others or keeping up with the “Joneses”.  I truly believe that creating a beautiful scenery is a help to the surrounding community.  Landscaping is the best of both the exercise and community improvement worlds.  Here are some pics.

This is the plan on paper

 All in all, there are many neat things that I will be doing with my landscape.  Many wonderful native plantings as well as ALOT of lawn removal.  I have created all the planting beds now and with the amount of lawn that I removed I have reduced lawn mowing time from about 3 hours to about 1 hour and 15 minutes.

This is th flagstone path that I built

 This is the main flagstone path the I built that runs from my driveway to the rear of the house.  I did this all myself after work in one week.  This was really hard work but not near as hard as creating the beds by removing sod.

This is three of the six 10' cedars for screening

 These trees will provide screening of the neighbors for more privacy.  All in all there will be 29 new trees of various types planted.  I have planted 26 so far.  Trees add structure to a landscape.

This is my back lawn with additional flagstone paths that I built coming off the deck and through the trees on the right.

This is a view of my back lawn from almost the property line.  It is a vary nice and relaxing atmosphere which is my goal for the plan.  Providing beautification and peacefulness to my home is the desired outcome.  Oh yeah, and fun too.  I am hoping that it will be a great place for my future children to play and frolic.

I will keep updating pics as I move along.  My wife takes these pics as you can tell they are of a much higher quality as compared to when I take them. HAHAHA  HAve a great day