thrifty landscaping

is all about reusing (at least to me). I am currently in the process of making our lanscaping less high maintenance.


The trees in the backyard~I have always had big rocks making a border around the base of each of three trees and then I would fill the area with mulch. The next year I would add more mulch and the third year I would take out all the mulch and start fresh. It sucked. It was not hard to maintain but required at least a couple hours of labor every year. That is not really much when you don't have kids but now with kids, work, the garden, the dog and everything else on my plate those 2 hours have better places to be spent so this year I changed the landscaping. This year I am only boardering 2 of the bigger trees. I am filling in the area of one tree with larger and smaller rocks (pull or spray roundup on the weeds and go-my kind of landscaping and maintenance) and around the other tree I am placing white marble rock that I am digging out from my current "rock garden".






I am taking the pavers from the edge of my rock garden and making a walkway to the front porch (which K and I are going to plant some flowers around later-we got a big bag of seeds for free from the sitter). We used to have stepping stones surrounded by mulch and big rocks. It looked nice but was kind of a pain to maintain. I think the mail carrier will like our change. I am pretty sure she was tired of stepping on wet mulch after a rain. One year I got this bright idea to use cocoa bean mulch. I could not stand the smell after a rain. My rock garden is going to become lawn again. Bet that will make the meter reader happy. He has to step in all the rocks to read the meter.




In front of the front porch we have 4 hostas which are surrounded by lava rock. We are taking out the lava rock (edited~I decided to leave the lava rock) and filling in an area that will never grow anything (besides hostas) and making that look pretty with big rocks and will put some sort of lawn ornament over there. We are taking out 3 flower beds (which only grow weeds) and making them part of the lawn once again.




three flower beds I took out today




I am stumped on what to do on the other side of the house. We have a couple hostas and lillies of the valley there and the central air unit. It needs work but it is mostly shaded so I am still deciding.



As you can tell from above, I am reusing everything that we already had to redo the landscaping. Nothing will go to waste (except for the old mulch from the front walkway). All the big rocks in the rock garden will go around the trees in the backyard. The edgers become a walkway. Whatever marble is not used will fill in potholes in the driveway. Yep, I reuse everything possible.

A non landscaping project that is going to require R and my brother is replacing the railing on the side porch. It is loose and broken in spots.( It broke completely off one side today so I put a piece of lattice there temporarily until R can fix it) I came up with an idea and they are um.....well.....less than thrilled. I want to take the white lattice (that I already have! it is just sitting in the garage BEGGING to be used) and have them make a frame around it with 2 X 4's and then mount that to the sides of the stairs and the small deck. It would be very easy to decorate for holidays and on the back side it would make a really nice area for my morning glories to climb. R is not so thrilled about morning glories climbing that because he is afraid it will bloom on top and bring the bees. I agree BUT I also said that the morning glories are right there anyway. They grow up the side of the house and frame the picture window in the kitchen. They do that every year without any direction from me and the picture window is right by the deck. It is no different than having the lattice there. And a benefit for him is that the dog will no longer be able to jump off the side of the deck and get tangled so he has to go out and untangle her. The sheets of lattice that I have are actually big enough to frame in the whole area, sides up to the roof. I have an idea in my head of how that would look but R's idea is that it would look stupid. I think it would look really nice in the summer with the morning glories climbing it but he says no. I will let him win that battle since he will be doing most of the work. LOL

the railing that broke today