New Landscaping Gives a Beautiful New Look To Our House!!
It occurred to me that when I showed you photos of the exterior of our Floridian house, I never showed you the "beard" of juniper that cluttered - uh- bordered the driveway. The reason is simple. I've hated that juniper since the day we moved in. It was ugly and nasty, no other way to say it. I DID show a bit of it to you on Facebook recently when a flock of ibises munched their way around it.
There is is - on one side of the drive. Ugly and nasty, and those tall shoots are elm tree shoots, because one of my elms is nearby and throws out seed pods in desperate profusion. Here's a picture of the juniper on the other side of the drive - just as nasty. I always knew that it was not only ugly and scratchy but a perfect haven for snakes and other creatures. We really wanted to replace it with a lovely display of brown river rock and maybe some nice flowers growing around the mailbox.
So, after having talked about it for months and months, back in late August we finally contacted a number of landscapers and got a bid from one called Village Landscapers. Having no idea of what we wanted (other than the removal of the damned juniper) we told him to walk through the property and give us a bid on whatever he thought he'd like to do, and we'd pare and choose and nitpick until we met someplace in the middle and could zero in on what we wanted. Well - his "okay, I'm going to go hog-wild with this property" bid came to over $11,000!!!! After we picked ourselves off the floor we examined his very, very detailed bid and chose the things we wanted him to actually accomplish - for a little under $3000. Well, that was just fine - the only catch was that he is SO busy he told us it would be at least 6 to 8 WEEKS before he could fit us into his schedule. Talk about the suspense!!!
Now, my lawn care trolls -uh- persons, talented little monsters -stop it- mowers that they are, had on occasion "trimmed" (word used very loosely) my plant life. When I asked for my delicate hibiscus shrub to be "trimmed back" he buzz-cut the poor thing with the same electric pruning saw you use to cut off tree limbs - no shape, no care - just zapped off the top few feet of the thing - everything they touched looked HIDEOUS - so I told them they were FORBIDDEN to EVER touch anything but my lawn again! I started counting the minutes until I could FIRE them! See, around here it's difficult to find what in California we would call a "GARDENER". There are lawn care companies. They don't know a flower from a tomato plant. The landscaper however promised me that they knew of some genuine gardeners, and would hook us up with one after they re-did the garden.
Okay, so here we were, watching the garden get shaggier and shaggier while we waited for the magic phone call that would tell us that the landscapers were on their way. That call came on Thursday! YAY!!!
Friday morning they appeared - the two landscapers and a crew of five guys, along with several trucks full of tools and machines and all sorts of cool stuff. I was introduced to each of them then they got right to work - REMOVING THE JUNIPER!!! No easy task, I assure you!
This was not only because juniper has large roots that are runners under ground but the elm tree nearby also had roots spreading everywhere, and they had to dig down and yank out a lot of roots and so forth - and just as I had always suspected, one of the things they pulled out of there
by all sorts of wildlife is the norm, they asked me where I wanted them to put my snake. I told them I didn't want it so they just threw it into the truck with the juniper they'd yanked out and assured me they'd take it with them when they left.
They MORE than filled up the below hauler with juniper (and the snake) - because they were also trimming the shrubs along the sides of the house and REMOVING a lot of the shrubs from the back of
the house. I don't know if you recall the photos I
shared here on the blog of all the shrubbery in the back by the patio and along the north side of the house but all they were really doing was making it easier for the squirrels to climb up the screens to get to the roof. So out they had to come.
They also trimmed the back hedge and put in a metal liner to keep weeds out from beneath.
Here's how the back looks now, with the extraneous shrubbery removed - it's a bit bare right now but actually I feel much less "fenced in" when I look out the back, plus this gives us a lot of room to plant some herbs! Take a look:
dill, tarragon, thyme, and other herbs.
The patio is now entirely open and not all cluttered up the way it was. I can see some nice, low-growing flowers next to the house, can't you?
The back yard is more open now and I'm thinking we might just fill in that bare space with grass, or maybe more low-growing flowers. The place looks MUCH bigger now, too!
And here (below) is the back hedge with the new metal liner, which
gives it a pretty curve and makes it much more attractive.
But that's just the back yard! Wait'll you see the front!!
I'll pass by the west and east sides of the house, since all they did was trim the plants there to make them properly shaped and neat looking but I left you with the juniper and the reptile just being removed. What happened next?
Well, before they left for the day they had prepared the areas that would have the brown river rock and had even mostly finished one of the elms. Here's what it looked like yesterday evening: You can see the "weed mat" they put on on the area around the mailbox. This (obviously) will prevent grass, elm trees and weeds from growing up in between the rocks. I've actually seen some neighbors' houses where they didn't put down that mat and it now looks terrible, with all sorts of stuff growing up between the rocks. Definitely worth the extra bucks!
The area on the right side of the drive had not had the weed mat down by the time the crew left last night - you can see what a good job they did in removing all that juniper and shaping the area to be ready to receive the river rock.
This morning they showed up on exactly on time (again) and the first thing they did was call me outside to show me the flowers they'd chosen.
You see, I wanted a display of yellow, pink, and blue flowers around and all over the mailbox/lamp post (a couple of neighbors have two colors of flowers around their mailboxes and it looks very lovely), and I also wanted the same color combination in the window box. I had asked for pink mandevilla, which vines around and has lovely pink blooms (a perennial) but the foreman, Jesse, had been phoning around to find some and couldn't. This morning he showed up with one - having almost miraculously discovered a healthy-looking, flowering plant! What a guy! This is what the mandevilla flower looks like, by the way. Can you see a profusion of these winding their way around that lamp post? Yeah!!
Okay, so as you can see in the photo on the right, they set the plants around the mailbox, cutting little Xs through the weed mat and then returning it once the plants were in the ground. All three types of plants around the mailbox are perennails.
After the plants were done they poured the river rock into the designated areas and raked it into place. As some of the crew were doing that, others were planting annuals into the window box, (photo below) that are also blue, pink, and yellow. Al had wanted to put color pots into the window box but he'd have to go to the nursery himself to pick out what he liked, and since they're expensive, Jesse didn't want to pick out something we might not be happy with. So we'll hopefully have these flowers blooming until maybe March, which will give us enough time to figure out what we'd want to replace them with.
So, at last our garden is beautiful!
This first photo looks out from the front door to the elm tree. Crisp and clean looking!
And here's our new, lovely River Rock display with the newly planted flowers around the mail box. It'll take a while before they settle in and start to bloom but in another year or two I expect them to look splendid!
Let me know what you think about our new look!!
