More Shrub Love!

Now that the weather is cooler and our schedules are winding down the hubs and I decided to finally remove these ugly shrubs we've had in the front yard. In April we made a lot of landscaping changes which I discussed here but we're back at it again. We decided to leave two of the original scrubs in place when we first landscaped and that was a big mistake because they went from bad to worse over the course of the brutally hot summer.

I only have a picture of one of the shrubs still in the ground because hubs got to work before I was home in time to snap pictures which is fine by me! This was the best looking of the shrubs however after a valiant effort on our part to keep it green this summer it started to die...

Here's how the other monster of a shrub looked...totally dead!  I guess because it had already died it was uprooted within 25 minutes, the shrub above took FOREVER to remove (sorry hubs!)

Look at him go!

Tanner and Gresham thoroughly enjoyed themselves during this time!

Once the shrubs were taken out it was time to replace them with dreamy Nandina shrubs! I wanted Nandinas in the front yard from the very beginning because they're a beautiful evergreen that changes from pretty shades of green to reddish-pinks and even blooms with red berries during the winter (which is perfect to cut off and bring inside during Christmas time for decorating!) The problem was I could only find them at nurseries during the spring and summer and they were going for $50 and up per shrub! There was no way that was happening, so I patiently waited for the end of summer when Home Depot gets their shipment of nandinas in at $24.95 plus a military discount! Score!

I think it's a big improvement from this (taken in April):

 

To this:

I also love that you can see our adirondack chairs better from the front porch now!

I'm really happy with the landscaping in the front yard but we still need to work on the sides of the yard AND the backyard.

We did start working on a small garden bed that's on the right side of our house!

Here's a before picture:

I weeded, edged the garden bed, planted two beautiful limelight hydrangeas, transplanted some hostas and then mulched to make more progress!

It's looking better but we really need to work on the grass weed situation we have going on. Hubs put down fertilizer with weed killer then after a couple of weeks he'll put down grass seed. Fingers crossed it grows! Somewhere down the road we'd like to add lattice underneath the porch so it's less of an eyesore when you're up close.

Well that's all for now with our never ending landscaping saga!