Landscaping Phase #2

Last I showed you our backyard was lookin like this…

I had told you about the installation of the new drainage and the removal of the hedges.  We were left with a yard o’ dirt.  Then I came home the other day and I walked outside to this…

Ahhh! New magnolias and sod!  I can’t explain our excitement.  Let me show you around…

Take it all in people!

This grass is soft, like the grass we had in NY.  It is awesome to have something that is pleasant to walk on barefoot!

As I mentioned before we used Horizon Landscaping and they did an amazing job!

They were actually still working when I got home around 7pm.  They did such an amazing job, and they even stuck around to tell me how we should be taking care of the new trees and sod.  They were such polite guys and we are really impressed with their work!

We love that we still have lots of space in the yard with the new trees, yet they still block the neighbors in the back.  We will soon have some other updates back here, stay tuned!

Oh and of course some before and afters…

Backyard Issues

As I have previously mentioned we have some problems with flooding in our backyard when it rains heavily.  Justin has done a few things to try to fix the issue already, but we just aren’t winning the battle at this point.  Shall we take a look at what happens when it rains? Okay then!

Here was one time it flooded pretty bad.  Our whole patio floods about 2-3 inches when it rains pretty heavily.  Here is the other side of the patio…

Yup, those are floating dog toys! Good times!

Poor little plants, they drown in the lake our backyard becomes.

Here is the actual yard.  Char man loves it(he’s a big fan of water).

So, as you can see we are having quite the time here when it rains.  We are basically sitting inside crossing our fingers that the water doesn’t get one inch higher because it may actually seep under the patio doors.

So far we have had the gutters replaced/added to the back of the house, which has helped keep the water from pouring into our patio, but we still have major flooding issues.  From there Justin installed french drains, which helped slightly but they were still not quite doing the trick. These photos were taken after the french drains and gutters were installed, looking good right?

At this point we have had enough, sometimes there is a point when you just have to throw in the towel and call the professionals in.  We figured we were there, so Justin called a few landscaping companies and had them come out to our house to get some estimates.  We were looking for someone who can level the yard a bit, re-sod with a more durable grass(Charlie is tearing up the grass like mad), remove the hedges in the back and side of the yard, install a drainage system that drains to the street and plant new trees/hedges for privacy against the back fence.  It’s a tall order huh?  We would like to remove the holly bushes because they drop so many berries in the backyard and they are poisonous to the dogs, safety first people!  After receiving a few estimates we decided to go with  Horizon Landscaping.  They were not the least expensive, but they were fairly priced and they gave a proposal where they were going to complete everything the best way, not necessarily the cheapest way.  We figure if we are going to have this done we want it done right! Plus, Brian(the owner) is a pretty down to earth guy and he seems to know his stuff. If you need a landscaper in Jax check them out. I know what you’re thinking, get to the point Vanessa.  Well we headed to a nursery this weekend with Brian to pick out some new privacy solutions for the back fence.  Once we remove those back hedges we will be looking directly into the neighbors yard, not something I am looking forward to.  The nursery we went to was Williams Plant Nursery. Let me tell you, I fell in love with this place.  I guess I can just show you…

Look at all that green, so beautiful.

It had tons of huge, probably 200 year old oak trees all over the property.  They were gorgeous.

I would love to have a property with trees like this, maybe one day…

I love that ferns grow all over the huge branches.

Anyhow, we were there to check out some of our options, which I would like to share with you. Brian showed us a few choices, but everything seemed a little to small, we really wanted to have something that was already taller than our fence.  We looked at some bottle brush trees and Japanese blueberry trees, but ended up settling on a few 15-20 foot tall Chloe Magnolia trees.

Pretty huh?

They bloom beautiful flowers that are bigger than my head…

So that’s where were at with this backyard reno.  I will share more as we go, but we have plenty of time since the changes wont start until the end of this month.  Here’s one more oak tree before you go…

Can’t wait to see the results and have less of this…

and more of this…

Just kidding we don’t have room for all of this, were just hoping for some pretty grass and less flooding. Wish us luck!

Yardwork Yo (backyard edition)

It turns out our hedges…

…..are trees.

Justin looked them up and it turns out they aren’t bushes/hedges, they are suppose to be trees.  The people who lived here before us let them get overgrown.  Justin trimmed them back and freed up the bottom branches, it makes the yard feel a little bit bigger. Yay! We can use all the room we can get.

Since installing the screen we are unable to mow the lawn right up next to the the patio.  We also cannot use the weed wacker because it would hit the screen as well.  Our solution is to take the sod out next to the patio…

Charlie really wanted to keep the dirt patch.

We decided it would be best to make it a garden.  It solves all our mowing issues. So off we went to Lowe’s for gardening supplies.

We picked up plants for the garden..

We got two different dog friendly plants.  We really had to search for something that would be safe if the dogs were to eat it.  Zack is part cow, so we plan on him taking a taste at some point. The first plant we went with is a…

Yup, you guessed it a Sanchezia.  I really love this plant, dog safe and my two fav colors(green and yellow).  Next up we got…

A shrimp plant pachystachys of course.  This one is dog friendly and went well with our leafy sanchezia friend.  We also picked up a baby magnolia tree to add to the empty side of the yard.

And lastly we got 20 bags of red mulch.

From there I dug up and edged around the newly discovered trees in our backyard.

Once I was happy with the edging, I started dumping in the mulch.

with all the mulch in…

While I was mulching Justin was laying the garden fabric for the plants near the patio.

I then set the plants on top in the spots that I thought they should go.

I tried my best to get them as even as possible, I wanted to get the tape measure out and make sure they were all the same distance apart.  Justin said I was nuts and they looked good where they were.

From there we made slits in the fabric and dug into the soil to plant the sanchezia and pachystachys.

Boom they’re in! Time to add mulch!

We continued the garden fabric and mulch around the corner where we will eventually add a plant of some kind in the corner(possibly a small palm).

Then Justin dug a pretty decent hole and planted the magnolia tree.

And we were finished…

Feels like a whole new backyard!

Justin hates trees

I decided that Justin if not a big fan of trees. He has decided to cut some down and trim some up.  First he decided to cut down the two little holly trees in the back yard.  Apparently all the trees we have are not very dog friendly.  The holly berries are poisonous to dogs and our dogs eat everything… EVERYTHING.  Zack walks around the yard eating grass like a cow.  So the holly trees had to go:(  Here they are before…

This is what they look like now…

Little stumps.   We will dig out the stumps soon, just wanted to get rid of the berries asap.

Here’s Char, don’t blink you’ll miss him.  He’s fasttt.

As you can see there are no more trees/berries.  Next I noticed that Justin trimmed up the sago palms we have in our front yard.  These are also an issue since the sago palms have huge seeds that are also very toxic to dogs.  So we will most likely take them out as well.  In the mean time Justin trimmed them up.  You can see we have three…

Now they look like this…

Poor little babies lost all of their palms.  They were all dead.

So no more palms.  We will see if the actual trees will be staying or if we will take those out as well.