Cleaning up the Front Garden

I have been complaining about the planting bed in the front garden that's right off the front door for a while. Early this year, i finally did something about it. Everything had kind of grown together (and not in a pretty cramscaping way...) And there were gophers and leaves and... sigh.

doesn't this just scream "welcome"?

why do all my neighbor's leaves end up here?

Now, yes, these pictures are from earlier this year - but like May (after the Fling), long past when I should have cleaned off those leaves. But they did such a good job hiding this:

i. hate. gophers. 

Leaves cleared off, we end with this lovely view. Once, there was a flagstone path there. 

not sure this is an improvement yet

You'll note that camilla is tied back. While i would like to say that i did that, it might have been left over from when the house was painted... Poor plant. Clean up continued with digging out the bulbine, eurphoria and other assorted stuff. I also flattened out all the gopher mounds (gopher killing had already occurred a few weeks before...)

this is fairly narrow bed

now the furcraea has some room to breath...

along with the red yucca

the bed wraps around to the front, with lower mounding plants

New irrigation was installed. This bed used to get overspray from the lawn (when there was a lawn). While some drip lines were run when the lawn was removed, I don't think it was enough. Hopefully this will help.  

it snakes through the skinny part of the bed, then up to the yucca out of frame to the left. 

Some mulch - rock for where it's super sunny, and shredded wood for the shady parts near the house.

i also dug out and replaced the flag stone

the bulbine got replanted along the house

and the euphoria got a new home as well. 

I also managed to make room for some plants that had been in the pot holding area for a while. Some of them might get too big, but that's a problem for later (or a gardening style...)

looking towards the street

You can see that this happened before the changes that happened later - i.e. the palo verde falling over.

the new view from the front door - much nicer!

So far, everything has been holding up well. The rock mulch around the xMangave has also help keep the snails away - extra bonus! The changes have held up very well over our hot summer, although the irrigation needs some more adjusting.