The Landscape Project Update & $$

 

I can honestly tell you I've never really had much of a yard here as long as I've owned this house.  The first few years we transformed it from a tangled, overplanted jungle to a lawn with a few flowers.  Over the years other projects and life in general took precedent as I watched the sod I had installed many years ago wither and die off due to poor soil and lack of sunlight.  With limited funds, knowledge and time our yard took the hit.  Last year I was determined to change all that and finally make the outside of my home match the inside.  In early spring of 2021 I began the demo and then as many of you know life threw me a curveball.  But that's okay, because it allowed me more time to plot, plan and research this project.  And save up some more money too.

 

Fast forward to early spring 2022 and we got rain.  Lots of it!  Which was good because we needed it, but it sure did put a damper on my plans.  So I waited.  Some more.  And in mid May I was able to get outside and get started on this long awaited landscape project.  I worked on my yard in between wind, rain, hail, thunder and lightning storms throughout the month of May and progress was made.  I even resurrected the old raised beds at the very back of our yard and my daughter and I planted a garden.

 

I devoted the entire month of June to this project and by the end of the month I had made it from the curb at the street all the way into the backyard to the end of our upper deck.  Right now the lower deck is housing my project woodpile and the rest of the yard is the garden and chicken coop area.  I have grand plans for that once the garden is harvested this fall, but for now my main focus is the rest of the yard and the upper deck.

 

It amazes me the transformation I have been able to make in just six weeks.  From a barren wasteland to my dream landscape.  We now have a weed free gravel parking area with a beautiful little flowerbed and a darling little fence and gate that opens into our front yard.  We have a lawn with more flowerbeds filled with plants and shrubs.  Our pond is up and running and surrounded by a lovely flowerbed that runs the length of our house wrapping around to the backyard deck.

 

We have a lovely seating area in front of the pond where we can sit and enjoy the shade in the canopy of our trees and the sound of the water from the spitting frog.  From where you sit you can see the entire yard, front to back.

 

I added another flowerbed underneath the pear tree with plans for blueberries and strawberries next spring.  All of our flowerbeds are edged with rocks we already had in our yard until I got to this one and had to acquire more rocks.  I picked up a truckload of FREE rocks thru Facebook Marketplace and continued on.  All of our soil has been amended with our own homemade compost and our new plants are thriving.  I've never seen so many earthworms in our soil as I do now.

 

Our deck was sanded and stained in 2020 and we added a pergola.  A year later it suffered a wardrobe malfunction with the lattice top, but this year I was able to get it repaired and finally added the lights I had set aside from our Christmas décor to the perimeter.  Our deck is now a lovely outdoor space we get to really enjoy and we have been.  We have a nice seating area plus a table with stools for eating along with our barbecue.

 

Originally, I had set aside a $1000 budget for this project.  This year, due to inflation and the rising cost of just about everything, I saved an extra $500 to add to my budget and figured I'd go as far as I could with that and see where I ended up.  I had been saving Home Depot gift cards for over a year and had several of those to add to the pot as well.  So are you dying to see how much I spent on my landscape project so far?  Did I budget enough?

 

Well, since you asked, I have spent $557.96, just over a third of my budget so far.  The bulk of that was for the faux grass which we absolutely love.  By reusing a lot of things I already had and acquiring expensive items like rock and gravel for FREE off of Facebook Marketplace, plus doing all of the work myself it save me a ton of money.  My girls also bought me some of the plants and shrubs as gifts for Mother's Day and Father's Day which was a big help too.

 

I'm not done.  I still need to bring in more gravel, I have plans for a front porch update, I want to do something around the hose bib area and I've got big plans for making a beautiful vegetable garden area in the backyard.  Plus there are a lot of other little tinkering projects I want to work on around the outside of our home.  Plenty to keep me busy.  So what do you think so far?