The Front Yard and Sneak Peeks

Hello! I am a plantaholic.

We are finally done (well, almost done) with the entirely too long process of redoing our yard. After all of the chaos on Friday, we spent all day Saturday re-mulching and planting new flowers in the front yard, as well as the never-ending process of tilling the backyard beds, putting in an electric fence (sorry Louie), and attempting to put in our own version of a sprinkler system so that we don't have to water the beds ourselves. We also bought 1,130 pounds of sandstone to make paths throughout the beds in the backyard. And I laid them in the beds. ALL 1,130 pounds of them. Which probably explains why I'm in pain right now. We are all so sore and we all worked way too hard!

The fruits of my labor:

My mom and I finally made it out to the nursery Saturday night at about 5pm (which was so fun!) but didn't get a chance to plant much of anything in the backyard until it was already pretty dark...and so the work continued for most of Sunday as well.

On Sunday, we planted, watered, killed weeds, planted some more, and complained about how sore we all were. Then my parents had to leave, which I was very sad about!! They were so helpful and we definitely could have never done this all without them. My mom has been such an amazing help and I am so lucky that she is so great with flowers!!

So...here is our yard:

Just kidding!!!!!! Haha, but that is one of the gardens that my mom designed. And they're all full grown plants. The ones in our garden are still little babies, but I am very excited because I think that all of the plants in the picture above are in our garden as well! So it will look like that...eventually.

Here is a real picture of part of the bed in our front yard:

See? They are very small, but I love them and can't wait for them to grow! The biggest ones are called Nantina, and they will get a lot bigger and will have big red leaves on them. The middle row are all Red Rocks, which are pretty, hot pink-reddish flowers, and the front row is full of Verbena--those are violet flowers that apparantly do amazing in West Texas.

Next are the pots on the front porch and in front of the garage. These have Ginger, Impatiens, Petunias, and a couple of others that i can't remember the names of! These will also be huge by the end of the summer.

This is the bed in the very front of our yard where our Redbud tree lives. Up there we have 3 types of flowers that are are great for West Texas weather--Lantana, Verbena, and Knockout Roses. I'm also hoping that the Periwinkles we planted last year will come back up because they were so pretty and they did so well!

You can barely see the Golden Coneflowers in this picture, but they are surrounding the knockout rose in the middle. The full-sized version is actually in the "fake" picture I showed you above. They are huge, yellow, and some of my favorites! We had all of the Knockouts last summer, so they're still dormant from all the cold weather.

There are several other flowers in the frontyard bed, but they are so little that I didn't take pictures....but I will once they start growing!

Since we haven't put the mulch down in the backyard, I decided not to show it to you yet, but I will give you a sneak peak of some of the plants I'm really excited about!

First is the Winter Creeper. There are several of these in the backyard, and I LOVE the colors on them. They will be about 2 feet high when they're full grown. You can also see a knockout rose in the background, we have lots of those too!

This poor little Hydrangea was in our frontyard last year, but it got WAY too much sun so we moved it to one of our shade beds in the back. Hydrangeas are without a doubt my favorite flower! Anyone who's ever seen a full-grown hydrangea plant knows that get huge as well (I guess you get that point by now, everything will get a lot bigger!).

I am obsessed with Hostas...I have no clue why. I just think that are so pretty and full so I was very happy that we planted 15 of these things in the back yard!

Pretty Shasta Daisies....their lacking the daisies right now, but it won't be long before they show up!

More Lantana....can't wait for these to grow!

I'm also obsessed with Lavender. First of all it smells amazing, even these little baby Lavenders smell SO good. But I also really like that they can get to like 4 feet tall and have a very wild look about them. They're actually pictured in the "fake" garden above as well--the big purple ones!

Here are some others that are full grown in my parent's front yard back in Colorado:

I hope our gardens grow to look as great as theirs! Happy Monday!

Between Naps on the Porch