Hello Friends! It seems like our weather has finally made a turn towards spring. Dare I say here to stay. I mean we just had snow this time last week, and growing up in New England you don’t really start to get your hopes up that spring is finally here to stay until about mid-May. I’ve had snow on my birthday before which is in the first week of May, so it’s normal to feel like we have to hold our breath and just wait and see, lol. However this past weekend with temps reaching into the 60’s was a welcome sight. We began doing some yard work over the weekend and it felt so good to dust the last bits of winter off. And now I have the itch, ha ha! I had shared before, that now with our master bathroom renovation over, we started to turn our focus outside on our yard. We’ve had some projects in mind that we have been setting aside for this upcoming season, and this warm weather has me itching to start. So today I want to share some of our landscaping plans with you.
I know I’ve only highlighted glimpse’s of our outdoor spaces before. I love our farmers porch, it’s one of our favorite places to have our coffee in the morning on the weekends, and our favorite place to sit at the end of the day, and go over the day.
When you pull into our gravel driveway there is parking along the side of our porch, and in front of our house. We have trees the line the road in front of our house that act as a natural privacy wall, and then the rest of our house is surrounded by woods. We have 100 acres of conservation land behind us, so to say we live in a pretty rural area is quite accurate, and we love it!
To put it into perspective, we had a broken down driveway about 1/4 of the size it is now, and no grass or yard of any kind. So our first few years living here were spent putting in the gravel driveway, leveling the yard, hydro seeding so we would have a lawn. We re-built our barn, and then began to add landscaping around our yard.
So we have done quite a bit on our 2 acre lot. Along with adding our chicken coop 2 years ago, we’ve added some more landscape to soften it’s appearance. I feel like this year will be the fun year. All those years of laying the foundation for our yard, and getting the bigger items out of the way, like the driveway, and the lawn, now we get to add the pretty stuff.
Making over our patio and rebuilding our barn 3 years ago was really a turning point for our yard. We were finally able to add in some much needed landscape, and really start to give this plot of land some shape. I remember thinking back, and thinking of how overwhelming our whole yard felt. I realized that first it takes time. Especially when you are starting from scratch, plants need time – years to mature. And second, that if I broke our yard down into sections, it felt much more doable. Almost like breaking it up into little rooms, and tackling one room at a time, it was much less intimidating for me, and we were able to do things as our budget allowed. Because lets be real landscaping can be expensive! We put in some hard work and have totally reaped the benefit of it, so I’m excited to see how our yard takes shapes with these next landscaping plans we have.
First off, I grown a love for ornamental grasses. Literally, lol! They first came on the scene with our with our patio makeover, and I’ve quickly became a fan. They require little watering, are very hardy, and can be split into more after only a few short years. So I definitely plan to incorporate some more of those. I also love “white” gardens, incorporating mostly white flowering plants. I know there are so many things we could plant, but I love the minimalist – monochromatic look. Along with adding some more plants, we want to add another outdoor seating area right off of the house. I drew in some plans in the picture below to show the areas we plan on tackling.
We want to add a pergola off the side of the house. It looks like a small area in the photo above, but it’s actually about a 16×16 area. I don’t intend one building one quite that large, because I will want to have room to add some bushes around it, and a sweet little walkway that leads to it, starting from the top of the driveway.
Speaking of the driveway, I want to edge out the entire driveway with cobblestone pavers. This would really help clean up the look of the gravel driveway, and make it feel more manicured. We also want to tackle the farmers porch. The photos you see here are from last year, and towards the end of the summer the paint started peeling on it again 🙁 So we really want to basically build a porch with decking right over the concrete slab that is currently there. And if you caught my “Currently Loving” post, than you saw a glimpse of the herringbone steps I want to add too.
This weekend we are actually getting started on a project behind our barn, so I will be sure to share more details on what we are planning for back there soon!
How about you, do you have any landscaping plans for this year? I’d love to hear what you are planning, or dreaming, or if you have any good plant suggestions for our yard, that don’t require too much attention, lol 🙂
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Bre, I love your yard, it’s nice and flat but surrounded by woods and privacy. The best of both worlds. I like Hosta plants, and perennials that grow big and need to be divided every few years. You can really build your garden that way inexpensively. And many gardeners will give away or sell their plants in the Spring when they are dividing them up. Do a search on Craigslist.
A few boxwood shrubs are nice too because as they grow, you can use the cuttings for wreaths and other Christmas decorations. I used to trim my boxwood shrub in December, just for that purpose.
By the way, what program do you use to draw ideas on top of a photo as you have done here?
Thanks,
Christine