The landscaping at the little yellow “Forest” house was overgrown and neglected. The problem stemmed from the aging, builder-installed landscaping that needed to be tamed (and partially removed). But also, we knew zero about lawns and plants outside of Florida. Wait – it’s not St. Augustine? Well….what is it then? Where are the Eureka palms?
All of it was screaming for a makeover. The bushes had begun to resemble large moldy clunks on an oversized piece of yellow bread. How’s that for a visual?!
We plan to paint the house in the spring, so trimming back some of the plants will also help us gain access to the house later.
We got started by removing the shrubs in front of the garage. Originally, we thought we could just trim them back, but they were so overgrown, it was a bit of a lost cause. Chopping them down and removing them was NOT EASY. We initially hooked them to the back of the Outback and attempted to pull them out. But, 4-cylinders was not enough to extract these tenacious beasts. Chainsaw, please!
Once we removed all the shrubs, and hauled all the debris to the curb, the entire side of the house looked bigger, albeit a tad barren. But this encouraged us to continue!
On the other side of the front door, the Indian Hawthorne shrubs were suffering from disease. In an effort to save them, we trimmed them down to the ground and thinned them way out. Fingers crossed they grow back in the spring even healthier.
The holly bushes right behind the Indian Hawthorne (in front of the window) were really overgrown as well. Instead of removing them (holly bites back, you know! Ouch!) we just gave them some legs. Cue the whistling! We also added a lot of pine straw to tamp down the weeds.
We have quite a bit more landscaping to tackle, but this got us started and gave us something to do that wasn’t basement-office related!
Here are some more before and afters! So cathartic.
