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.

Front Garden Fall/Winter Project

For this fall/winter, i want to re-work the part of my garden that was the first bed i even put together. It's in the front garden - right up next to the house, and is about 6 years old now.

Funny story - when i first bought the house, the yard was horrendous. So bad in fact, that both of my very nice neighbors said some version of "hello, welcome to the neighborhood, when are you fixing your front yard?" Since i wanted to get it done quickly, i mostly followed what was already there (grass, a tree, etc) except for this area right by the house. I created a "stone pond" with a long, skinny planting bed around it. This gave me the chance to experiment with a lot of plants, even as the rest of the garden slowly took shape around it.

Here is what it looks like today. It's hard to capture the whole bed in one picture.

view from the front door walk way

View towards the front door walkway

You can see the "stone pond" in the middle, which worked out pretty well. There's a few "statement plants" in the bed - whether they started that way or not:

• Furcraea foetida (mauritius hemp) - this one started tiny and was not supposed to survive. oops
• Yucca recurvifolia - this one now has 2 heads, and has recovered from the accidental "pineapple treatment" the landscaper gave it
• the grasses - whether the mexican feathergrass or the purple fountain grass
• not quite as stand out any more, but there are 2 hesperaloes in the bed - one red and one yellow
• that lantana is the only one that's survived multiple mojave winters...
• Not really in these pictures, but by the front door is the Camillia sasanque 'Yuletide'.

The part of the bed that's closest to the house is a bit of an overgrown mess, but i like all the plants...

the camillia - i'm thinking clean up and new mulch?

 This part in particular is a mess:

remove the pups, mulch & maybe some low ground covers?

 There are also some plants between the house and the furcraea - i'm thinking of digging those out and replacing them with something lower? There used to be a path there too, but there's no point to that anymore. I'm thinking cramming this bed full of plants is better alternative, but mostly lower forms, so the spiky furcraea can stand out on its own. Maybe some more lantana?

that grass needs to move also - just to deconflict a bit with the other plants

The red yucca probably needs to be dug up, divided, moved a bit, and then replanted. And maybe some low sedums as a companion?

The other half of the bed has one big problem that has to get fixed before anything else - Bermuda grass! So I'll probably start by digging all that out. Then:

i like most of the plants around the yucca - i'm thinking clean up and wood mulch? 

 The front most part of the bed has the big purple fountain grass in it. I'm thinking the mexican feathergrass needs to be removed, and then the purple grass in it's place? This seems like too much grass.

the problem is that purple fountain grass looks horrid for 3 months each year

The feathergrass on the right in the picture above has been there since i first planted the garden (or some version of it). I've tried planting other things a few times, but they never "look right". So maybe it gets to stay?

This part of the bed also needs more low, round-ish shapes - too many spiky things right now. And i'd like something to "billow" over the gravel path in the front, to make it look more lush.

I really want this bed to be "cramscaped" (to steal a term from Loree!) so that it contrasts with the rest of the front yard, which is a bit more "desert-bare" (not really, but relatively...)

from the street

straight on - you can see how the rest of the front garden is more open

I think i'll start with a continued clean up & digging out the bermuda grass.The house will also get painted in February, so moving some of the plants near the house is probably a good idea anyway. Then compost, maybe some new mulch & rocks for the "pond", and then new plants! New plants is my favorite part :)

Any and all other good ideas welcome!  

The garden in 2017 - the Front Garden

...the answer to the question in the last post, 6 months ago, was it was hot, stayed hot and didn't any better until like 3 weeks ago. That led to me neglecting the garden for most of the latter part of 2016. So I suppose I should be happy it doesn't look worse? I've decided to document some of the things I want to fix before spring rolls around, hopefully this will help remind me!

*****warning - pictures of garden ugliness ahead! ******

We'll start in the front garden, because it looks better. As i should have expected, the new landscape has been holding up really well!

In the back corner, all the cherry tree and cacti need is some cleaning. And i should trim those roses:

This situation, near the curve in the front garden path, mostly needs trimming, cleaning of leaves, and the likely some new plants. I'm still figuring out the new water situation here.

Moving to the bed that's nearest the drive way, the Acacia redolens 'Low Boy' is doing an excellent job catching leaves? (In positive news, that's a Grevillea 'Red Hooks' in the corner of that picture... it seems to be surviving winter!)

This area, right by the front window needs some cleaning and weeding, but probably also some plant addition & removal. I should remove the fucraea foetida pups - the mother plant has gotten huge! The clematis jackmanni can probably survive a cut back also - I did finally replace the falling down support with a metal one.

Not everything in the front garden is buried in my neighbor's Londonplane Tree leaves at the moment - my camellia (i think this is c. sasanqua 'Yuletide'?) is blooming a lot more than before! And for a longer time this year too.

Now, with that palate cleanser, let's move the back garden... sigh. But since this post is long enough already (and the back garden has a lot of ... issues, i'll make that a separate post.

Front Yard - Before

Changes are afoot in the front yard! Before all the work is finished, I figured I should remember what it looked like before. Last year, the front garden looked like this:

The lawn in all it's green glory

The front yard was one of the first things I "fixed" after moving into the house. After all, when the first thing two of my neighbors asked was "welcome to the street, when are you fixing your yard?", I can take a hint! At that point, I didn't have much experience gardening in the desert yet, so while a lot of the front garden ended up not being grass (dry stream bed, planting beds), going with grass most of where it had been before made some sense. There is a narrow planting bed up near the house that allowed me to start experimenting with plants:

The planting beds (about a year ago)

As I figured out more and more things to grow (and decided I really didn't like mowing), I started to think about removing the grass. Especially after the back garden was done with no grass, and the drought carried on, it became more obvious that taking out the grass was a good idea. The final push was a few simple things: the drought got worse, there were rebates, and i realized just how much water the lawn was taking... Since my back garden is mostly desertscape, I switched to the same watering schedule in the front as in the back, and within about 2 weeks, the front garden looked like this:

horrible looking grass

mostly dead grass

The plants that were not grass were fine, which helped me realize how much extra water had been going to the lawn. And then my lawn mower broke too, so that was the end of that! After a few weeks of research, measuring and a design sketch, I was able to get the same landscape contractor I've used before to great results to come tear out the grass, update the irrigation, do hardscaping, and add some plants. After the first day of work, I came home to a blank slate:

Here we go!