Landscaping: Before and After

I've been wanting to blog on a few things we've updated on the house....first up: landscaping!

Here are some before shots of the front of the house....red rock, overgrown bushes, dead tree, no brick pavers, and not a lot of color....

 Here are some after shots of the front of the house....new rock, new bushes, removed dead tree and replaced with a new one, new shrubs, and some color!

Here are some before shots of one side of our house- red rock, ugly piping, lack of bushes

 And, here are some afters....new tall grasses, new rock, covered up the ugly piping....

Here are some before shots of the back of the house....this was my biggest eyesore. Old, dead tree; lots of overgrown shrubs; no rock like around the house- but instead, old mulch; no edging or stone; old buried railroad ties; buried stones and benches...it was pretty bad. This is the spot behind the pool so we see it often so we wanted that re-done bad!

 Here's a shot of the back part re-done without too much growth.....

And, here's a shot of the after....

Here are some before shots of the front and back of the pool area- old mulch, overgrown flowers, no stone edging, lots of weeds, grass, and we discovered the stone path when we were mowing one day!

Here are a couple of mid-progress shots

 And, here are a couple after shots- new rock, new edging, weeding, pruning, new stone path and more. We really did try to keep as many of their flowers that we could while just cleaning up the area!

Here's a few more random before shots....

Here are some after shots of the same spaces- more stone edging, rock, cleaned up the garden, mulched around our backyard trees and trying to revive our hydrangea bushes!

It was our first huge new house project...most of it got done last year, but some of it got done this year still. This is our second year of gardening and we sure are learning a lot about that. It's pretty fun, but I'm not sure the time and money you put into it is worth the output. But, I planted a lot of tomatoes and that's one of my favorites so I may change my mind. I may be interested in trying a cut flower garden some day too.

The other update we did was new outdoor lighting....it made a huge difference too!

Stay tuned for more house updates. Even though no one reads my blog, I'm excited to look back at our house some day and see all of our home improvements!