New Landscaping Reveal – Front Garden

Ya, finally!!! As I’ve mentioned here and here we worked with an awesome landscape designer, Barabara Monfort from Meadows Farms Nurseries to come up with a plan for the front yard. We then took her cues and came up with plans for the rest of the yard (the whole yard needed some TLC real bad). Since it was too big of a project financially we decided to tackle it in parts aka. 2years.

Before we go any further, did I ever tell you that we have sprinklers in the yard that we’d gotten installed last year? The fussy handy man that he is, B just refused to take on the landscaping project for fear of rupturing the sprinkler tubes. Luckily Jigar Desai from J & A Landscaping came to our rescue. Jigar and his great team got the whole thing done in a day. He was even gracious enough to offer a free mow so that the lawn would get a pro hair cut (guess B’s edge trimming didn’t really measure up to Jigar’s standards).

Without much ado here is what we started with,

 

Ta da…….

I know, you cannot really see the mess out front in the ‘before’ pic. No worries, here is a close up.

We went from that to this;

We got rid of everything except for the two evergreens in the corners. Moved three of the four barberries to the other side.  Planted a plum dazzle crepe myrtle, the maroon one in the back, which grows up to 3-4 ft tall and has dark pink flowers (you can read more about my crepe myrtle love here). Added 2 drift/carpet roses. Swapped the azaleas for the salvia from the flower bed in the back.  Planted an abelia canyon creek in the corner on the right (with the light green leaves). It is supposed to grow to 2-3 ft tall and have fragrant white flowers.

On the other side we bid adieu to wilting azaleas and half dying junipers. A ‘before’ shot;

Isn’t it way cleaner now?

Here is close up of the before.

The ‘after’

A quick recap: The azaleas moved to the back yard and the salvia from the flower bed in the back moved to the front. The 3 barberries moved from the bed on the left. The day lilies moved to the right side of the bed. Got rid of all the junipers and dwarf barberries. Added another abelia canyon creek and 3 white drift/carpet roses to balance things off. And of course all the beds were cut wider.

Just look at all the plants they took out from the front alone! This is after we reused a lot of it.

The biggest change however is that we moved the sick looking magnolia from the front to the side yard.

The landscape designer had suggested that the tree was most likely going to die. Ever since it has been blooming like crazy. We also learned that these trees do not like wind and the spot that it was in is one of windiest parts of the yard. Anyways, I didn’t have the heart to throw it out and gave it a second chance in a less windy spot.

For now, we have a dead spot where the tree was.

We’ve filled it with sod from the side yard and also seeded the area. Hopefully it will spring back in a few weeks.

Had planned on showing you the whole thing today. But the post already has way too many photos. So I guess the side and the back yards will  have to wait until tomorrow.

Just a quick note; we got most of the plants from Meadows Farms Nurseries and some from Home Depot and Loews. This was our first time at Meadows Farms (I was always under the impression that nursery plants cost more) and we were really happy. The plants from Meadows Farms were way better in terms of quality and size than the others. The sales prices (they do have sales frequently) were almost the same as the big box stores. So do check out your local nurseries.

What do you guys think? Was the project worth the wait?

Update: See how the yard looks now after almost 3 years.

For more front garden ideas check out this post.