Front Yard Update - New Beds, Mulch, Boxwood and Stepping Stones!
Where to begin! Well, I’ll begin with this…my hands really hurt as I am typing this. I have three gigantic blisters, a blood blister, and a slice on my pointer finger. But I am just so excited to share our recent garden updates that I couldn’t wait for a complete recovery before posting!
Saturday was a very busy day at our house. We had a long list of projects to complete, including: mulching the front and backyards, planting new boxwood along our center pathway, creating new parterre garden beds and fixing our up our lawn. Alex asked two of his employees, Carlos and Netty, to come help us complete the work. That was a real life-saver because there’s no way we could have gotten so much work done in one day on our own.
Below on the left, you can see where we planned to add boxwood and stepping stones to the two beds that line the walkway to our front door. We also added a few stepping stones that connect to the new vegetable garden. You can read about our new vegetable garden in this blog post here.
Below on the right, you can see our large patch of grass which is where the new parterre garden beds are going. Our grass is pretty terrible, plus we don’t have any pets or kids that need lawn space. So we decided it’s not a big deal to remove even more of our grass for more garden beds. And, another plus, it’s less mowing for me to do!
While the men began mulching the backyard, I got started on the measurements for the new parterre garden beds. The beds were my idea…truthfully, because I ordered eight more rose bushes and simply needed more beds to plant them in!
Below is the basic layout I used to design our new beds (although the dimensions of our beds are slightly smaller at 5’ x 6.5’ instead of 8’x'8’). I recommend putting stakes in the ground at each corner around the outside border of the garden. You should have 12 stakes in the ground total. Then run your string in a straight line across the lawn to the opposite stake. You should have eight total lines of string. Finally, locate the exact center of the patch of lawn. Put a stake in the ground and tie a length of string to the stake that is the length of the radius of the circle you would like to be in the center. Tie a spray paint can to the end of the string and pull the string taut while you carefully walk in a circle to outline your center bed.
I found this Parterre garden design on Pinterest and used it as the inspiration for our new beds.
With everything in place, you can now edge out your beds! Follow the guide of the string and the spray paint to edge out the five separate areas. Once you have done that, you can begin to grub out the grass with a hoe. Progress pictures below! Whew, grubbing out grass with a hoe is such hard work and the source of all my blisters! Not to mention the back pain. I have a lot of respect for Alex and his crew for doing this work every single day.
After a short lunch break, I finished removing the grass and tilled the soil in the new beds with Alex’s gas tiller. The gas tiller is my favorite tool - I think this is the one we have from Home Depot.
Thankfully, by the time I finished tilling the soil, Netty and Carlos were mostly finished with spreading the mulch. I had some help loading the sod into wheel barrows to take to the front. Sod is so heavy.
Voila! What do you think of the new Parterre garden? I absolutely love it. It reminds me of our trip to Versailles. I took this photo from our guest room window because it helps a lot to see an aerial view of the beds to understand their shape.
Below is a complete view of our front yard now. We have come such a long way in the last few weeks. It is quite amazing that adding the vegetable garden fence and new beds has actually made the front yard seem much bigger than when it was all sod.
I am so eager for warmer weather. We have six David Austin Sombreuil Climbing Roses planted on either side of each arch. I can already picture them three years from now completely covering the arches.
As for the new Parterre garden beds, we are considering a Pinky Winky Hydrangea Tree for the center circle. Each of the four surrounding beds will contain two rose bushes: Francis Meilland, Love Song, Pope John Paul II, and Moonlight in Paris. We are still deciding on companion plants, but I believe we will plant Nepeta and Creeping Phlox. I also plan to add some allium bulbs in the Fall.
Patience and hard work pay off! We both love the front yard now that we have added in so many new beds and expanded the vegetable garden. I keep our front door open all day long so I can peak out at everything we have done!
Two Notes:
The Boxwood are Winter Gem Boxwood.
We always mulch with Leaf Mulch. I was surprised to learn that Alex’s clients often choose Hardwood Mulch over Leaf Mulch because Hardwood Mulch suppresses weeds better. Leaf Mulch is much more nutrient dense and we really think it makes a big difference in the health of our plants!
