Making a New Flowerbed

I promised I was going to start sharing more about landscape this coming year. Let's start by talking about new flowerbeds.

I was fortunate that I had a blank slate when constructing the new house. The guys that installed our irrigation system were the same guys that laid the sod. They used their small bulldozer and leveled the ground and put sod in the correct spaces and leaving the bare spots for flowerbeds. I had given them my landscape design to follow and they did great!

Over time, I have changed the shapes of beds and I wanted to share that process. It's not as hard as you might think. The thought of removing grass is scary in our red clay, but I only did that once when I wanted to reuse the sod in another location. The rest of the time, I cover up the grass!

This past weekend, the weather was warm so I played in my yard. Like I mentioned in my January Gardening post, this time of year you can still do things. You can plan things and spruce things up. With the leaves removed from plants, you can see a lot more and fix things. I was only planning to "plan" out my projects this past weekend, but then I just started doing more.

It has always bugged me the small mulch ring around one of my Maple trees. It was a large tree when we planted it, but the ring size felt so small and the mulch never stayed. I think each time we edged around the grass ring, the mulch was flown into the grass.

I decided to make it bigger. This would help the mulch stay in place (or the mulch in the center would and that's where it is important) and it would feel proportionate.

I used leftover spray paint and my yard stick. I put one end of the yard stick at the trunk and marked the end of the yard stick. I connected the dots all around the tree. I then used my shovel to trace the paint line. This would separate the grass roots.

Next up, I used my weed eater to scalp the grass inside the circle. I scalped it to the ground. We have Bermuda grass that is very invasive. This is good for filling in bare spots, but you want to keep the runners in their designated space. During the cold months, the Bermuda grass goes dormant. All the brown blades will eventually fall off and new green blades will appear. The brown does not change to green. In March I will scalp the entire yard ( kind of ) to encourage the green. But I don't scalp it to the ground like I just did in this circle.

I then laid leftover newspaper on the scalped section. It was a windy day, so I could only lay one piece at a time and then throw a handful of mulch on it to keep it down. A handful was enough. I did one sheet and one handful until I got all the way around. The newspaper will break down and enter the soil eventually. The newspaper and the thick mulch layer will block the sun from getting to the old grass and it will really die.

Once I got all the way around, I had a new, larger mulch ring for a large tree.

I made it as wide as the flowerbed that was near it.

It's something small that will go unnoticed, but in a decade when the tree is huge, it will be the right size and there won't be this tiny mulch ring for a huge tree. I'm sure the shade from the Maple would kill some Bermuda underneath, but now it is already taken care of and neatly done.

Now, while I was out there, I created a new flowerbed using this same technique. I had a Dogwood tree on the side of the house that didn't do well. There is just something about Dogwoods that I don't get. I tried them at the old house with no luck and replaced them with Eagleston Hollies.

The dogwood would have been a beautiful option to fill up the space between us and our neighbor, but I chucked it with the trash last week. And when I pulled it up, I didn't need a shovel. Its roots were gone, which just verified it was really dead.

I thought hard for a replacement, but I couldn't come up with just one tree. I kept thinking of a grouping of three trees, and those Eagleston Hollies were constantly popping in my head. But if I went to three trees, I needed a larger flowerbed. So, I marked where three trees would go first and then used my yardstick to mark their canopy. The "canopy" is how far they stretch out. I then connected the canopies of the trees to create the flowerbed.

I had many "dots" where I played with the placement of the trees and then I put a circle around the final choice.


I then took the weed-eater and scalped the grass.

I could then see the shape of the new bed and I liked it. It now feels like it belongs to our yard and not just some leftover vibe that it was giving.

I have not planted the trees yet. I don't even have the trees. I actually didn't scalp the grass where the trees are marked so that way I wouldn't lose my placement. But once the trees are planted, I will then use the newspaper and mulch technique to make it a flowerbed. I also plant to put some daylilies in the new flowerbed. I have those and they are part of the reason I made the bed larger. I needed a spot for them!

And while we are on the subject of flowerbeds, I wanted to share a picture that is my guide of what a blank-canvas flowerbed should look like. You want to build up the dirt mound to be higher than grass level. The picture below is a great example and what I use to mimic when I am creating a flowerbed.

I didn't use this the first go around and my plants let me know they were unhappy. So I dug everything up and did it just like the picture and the plants are thriving!

2015

2017

I don't plan to plant the trees now since it is so cold, but I'm not going to wait past April. The grass will start greening up and I need to have that scalped grass covered so I am not fighting it!

I hope this helps make the task of creating a new flowerbed less daunting. The task of removing grass feels big, but you can make it really simple.

French Drains

I kept busy 2016 winter with projects inside, but my gardener heart was ready to be outside again. I was eager to see what this season would bring and it didn't disappoint. Right after we moved in we realized we had water issues. It was Christmas of 2015 when it poured all day and we saw how bad our yard flooded.

I actually cried. Part of it was due to pregnancy hormones, but I saw a lot of hard work being washed away. There were then several rains in the Spring that kept flooding our yard.

I knew the side of the house closest to our nearest neighbor stayed wet during construction, so we made sure the contractors that graded our lot, installed the sprinklers and laid the grass, also put in a French drain to take the water away from that area between our houses.

But the rest of the house downspouts, I attached tubing that ran through the flowerbed and released the water into the grass. At each downspout I put rocks to help, and be pretty. I got this idea from another house in our neighborhood.

After the Christmas "flood" we never had a bad rainfall like that. But I noticed my plants were not growing. Some would have yellow leaves and some plants were losing their leaves completely. I started investigating and realized the plants were sitting in water! The water table in our area is high, and if I could do things all over again, I would not dig a single hole. I would have placed the plants on top of the clay and poured dirt around them. Then add mulch. This would create a berm-type of flowerbed, but it would help water not sit at the base of the plant and cause root-rot.

We also had issues with the driveway puddling. The driveway had a ridge meant to take the water to the sides, but the amount of water that came from the large driveway was way too much for the yard.

And the other issue was that each time it poured, I was having to rake mulch back into my flowerbeds.

I could put up a liner for the flowerbeds to keep the mulch in, but that also meant I would be keeping the water in the flowerbeds and continue to drown my plants. I decided to add lots and lots more french drains to control the water runoff. Each downspout on the north side of the house got attached to a drain and the drain ran out to the street. The other downspouts on the South side of the house, just release into the land next to us.

Now, I thought we agreed on the outlet being on the curb, but somehow communication failed and we got a pop-up drain in the grass. This worked fine for a while and the water flowed across the sidewalk and into the street. However, the grass area around the pop-up never dried out. This grass stayed green and lush, but I had one issue... Every time we mowed, the mower would sink in the mushy ground and leave tracks.At the very beginning of Spring, we had this issue fixed. We removed the pop up drains and had the pipe extended to the street curb.

We added drains to either side of the driveway to help with the water runoff there.

It has worked just as it should and we no longer have flooding in the driveway.

If I were to do one thing over regarding these French Drains, I would have used large PVC pipe to connect all the downspouts. I noticed a house in our neighborhood do that.

I just used the flexible piping from each downspout. Then when we added French drains, they connect my tubing to their tubing and ran it through the yard.

After the French Drains were installed I felt I could tackle the flowerbeds. I did an experimental section on the North side and the NorthEast flowerbeds. I dug up every single plant, filled the existing hole with drainage rock, put the plant on top of the rock and poured dirt around the plant. I had a lot of mounds of dirt, so I filled the space with mulch and also put mulch on top of the new mounds. Mulch is cheaper than the good dirt.

It was mid-summer when I did this, but I quickly noticed plants growing and looking healthier! My hydrangeas weren't growing at all, but they doubled in size once I replanted them correctly. After this success, I moved on to redoing every flowerbed. It was a lot of work, but so worth it. I spread it out over time. One section at a time. I got tired of the constant trips to the far away Lowes for mulch, fitting all I could in the car, that I decided to wait and place one large order and have it delivered. Lowes had 3 cubic feet bags for the lowest price. Most mulch bags are only 2 cubic feet. And Lowes charges one flat shipping fee that was worth it for the amount of mulch we needed. And we chose bags of mulch vs the truckload that we did last time because it saved us on labor. A truckload meant you were shoveling into the wheelbarrow and dumping. With bags, I could pile four bags in the wheel barrow, dump it wherever and go back for more. Mr. JCrew and I had a rhythm. He'd transport the bags and I would open them and spread them.

Early 2017

Mid 2017

I wish I had taken a picture of our pallets of mulch, but we ordered 400 bags that came on 9 pallets! It took up a lot of the driveway and were piled 15 feet high. I told Mr. JCrew the mulch was my Christmas present. And for Thanksgiving, we used our time off to spread the mulch. I felt so strong after all that work. Mr. JCrew and I joke about making a workout video called, "Garden Body by Lindsay." All I do is play in my yard and I build muscle. :)

I got a lot of mulch because of the berm-style flowerbeds we had just created. The beds are over 8 inches tall with mulch. This helps the water ricochet off the sides of the flowerbeds and also cuts down on the weeds.

I was sooo ready for Spring to get here and I can really see progress in the yard. It was too late in the season last year to see results. But with all the rain this Winter and Spring, my mind has been at ease knowing the plants are not getting too much water.

I put sand down on all the lines where the French Drains were added, but I learned that I used the wrong kind of sand (Play Sand). That causes compaction. I then used Scott's Lawn Soil over the bare areas. I then fertilized the yard and watered and by mid-June, the grass has almost completely filled the gaps. Yay!

Spring 2017

I did read a book AFTER we had performed this work, that I wish I had read before we built the house. I read about installing a reservoir tank underneath your house. I actually probably would have used the land next to our house to install. But the tank collects all the water runoff from the house when it rains. There is so much water that I see going into our street drain that I could put to use. It's like one huge rain barrel. Live and learn. There are up sides and downsides to rain barrels.

Below is a picture of a rain barrel that is installed under a porch. A builder we had interviewed early on was a green builder and he recently installed this rain barrel. Great idea!

I will say, it is a lot of fun to look back at pictures from 1-year ago and see how far we've come. It's humbling to see where we started and what we've got now. It has definitely been a labor of love. Soon, I will have to show current pictures. Raising the beds has really changed how the yard looks and the plants are performing so much better!

Landscaping

We have done the landscaping in many parts as we did that last house. But the phases were not spread out into years as it was at the last house. 

We had the yard graded for a while, but then the landscapers were waiting for it to rain to break up the big clumps of dirt. They were able to get the entire dirt pile spread out over our yard. It helped us avoid having to pay money for someone to come haul it away.

The rain never came, so they started with the irrigation. The sod was delivered the same day. 

I did not expect the sod to be spread out that day, but the guys stayed late and the sod install was complete and the sprinklers were aligned!

For two weeks we have watered twice a day for three hours a day. That was an hour for each sod zone.

I will say it has paid off. The grass is green and didn’t die in the July heat!

They say to keep the sod “floating” for two weeks. Now we will taper the watering times and let it dry out some so that we can get to the point we can mow it.

Before the sod was laid, we planted our large trees. 

Then Mr. JCrew and I started planting some plants. Our first section was under Mom’s window.

When you looked at all the plants we had, it felt overwhelming. Each person said how much work it was going to be.

And it was. Mr. JCrew and I took a day off from work to tackle it all. We arrived before any contractors and were the last to leave. It showed the contractors that we are not spoiled and we are willing to do anything. They’ve seen me with my drill, hammer and shovel. I can participate!

That day in the yard we planted 33 plants in the front and 33 plants in the back. I wish I would have taken a picture of us. We looked so cute all sweaty and muddy!

Since then, we’ve been adding a little by little. It was slowly coming together. 

The irrigation folks had to come back out to lay French Drains. I said from the beginning that we would need them. I saw the low points. Unfortunately, I was not listened to until after the sod was laid and they saw for themselves. So that tore up the yard a little bit, but flooding issues are taken care of. 

Once the French drains were complete, we could get the mulch placed. It bought me time to get all the plants in the ground.

The mulch company quoted me thousands of dollars. I told Mr. JCrew it looked like we would be doing this ourselves. I had 36 tractor scoops delivered. We received two truck loads Thursday night. We started spreading the mulch out Friday morning. 

We had reduced our mounds and were close to calling it a day, when our third truck-load came. It rained, so we took a break and got back out there. It was so hard! Physically, I felt like I was at the Crossfit Games. I would run with my wheelbarrow through the muddy parts so I wouldn't get stuck. Then we had the pitchfork that worked my core muscles. I feel stronger, but that was an intense workout!

We finished the mulch on Saturday. There were some areas we laid weed control fabric.

These were areas that I took my weed eater to to kill grass from our neighbors yard. And the weeds/grass in the back corner of our lot was never removed, so I was fighting that. I should have laid down a chemical to kill it, but I'm hoping the weed fabric and mulch is good enough. We did not buy the stakes, so we used mulch clumps to help hold down the fabric until we could get more mulch to spread all around.

We made a mess planting and laying mulch. We should have planted the plants first before sod so we weren't making grooves with our wheelbarrows in the wet sod. Lesson learned. 

I tried to choose large plants and trees because I knew they would dwarf up next to a large house. Some still feel small, but it will grow and be perfect in about five years. I paid attention to spacing carefully. I wanted to avoid placing things too close together ensuring I would not have to move it in five years.

This really was one of my favorite parts. The house started looking less like a construction zone. I even had the boys out there helping. They loved it, but they still have issues with getting themselves dirty. Poor kiddos! And the neighbors got a kick out of seeing the boys help. They were digging holes and using the hose to make it "rain."

We have utility boxes on the edge of our property. The street view has bushes hiding them, but we see them from the house. It's currently our scrap yard for material, but I planted some large bushes that will be beautiful to look at from our porch and take the attention away from the boxes.

 

And we already caught the geese enjoying the yard.

Doing the landscaping ourselves saved us tons of money but also got us to meet our neighbors. We had so many people stop to talk to us and they are all so nice! We've lived in this neighborhood for 7 years and the street we are moving on to has the nicest people. I am so happy with where we chose to build this house. It was the right choice. 

The yard is officially complete! I'm so excited I don't have to get muddy any more!