The Front Yard Landscaping is DONE!!!

Last week I shared the before of our front yard and went over the entire plan to re-landscape the whole thing (save for a few bushes on the sides), and today is the day I get to reveal how it all turned out!!

Before we get too far in I want to warn you that this is a reveal, but it's landscaping...so the plants that were put in are all relatively small. I would imagine that by the spring we may have a proper after to share- with a much more lush result. But in general we are SO happy with how it turned out and now are just patiently waiting for it all to GROW BABY GROW!!

Here's the before, just to remind you how far this little yard has come.

So let's get into it- up first let's discuss the side area of the house- this is where our landscape architect recommended leaving everything as is, to save on budget and there was nothing wrong with these areas. So on the left side of our house we have these bushes that remained unchanged.

Then we have the landscaping on the right side of the house, these bushes were already there and we don't love them, but we certainly don't mind them. The most important thing happening over here is the new espalier (fancy word for trellis)!! It's not much to look at yet, but you can see the X pattern and where the greenery will be trained to grow up and cover the wires. This is the side of our house that you see when you drive up our street so it's going to be such a pretty wow moment, I think!

For now it's just the cutest little bit of star jasmine...I'm not entirely sure how long it will take to fill in, but I will certainly keep you posted!

To the left of that corner of our house we have one of the re-shaped garden beds. In the post where I talked about the plans I mentioned that we were going for a lush English garden vibe- structured layers mixed with organic/flowy layers. Here you can see the layers, but they are so tiny! The back layer (closest to the house) are white azaleas (not blooming yet obviously), then we have foxtail ferns (the spiky lighter green ones), and then liriope purple explosion (not blooming yet either- they are the darker green spiky plants), all contained by a layer of boxwood, which will fill in and stay short.

Continuing over to the center of the house are the same layers, but right along the center path are the seasonal color- these will be swapped out every spring and fall and right now this area is filled in with small purple viola.

While we are over here, let's also take a look at the Camelia trees that were added. One on each little corner over here to flank the house. These will ultimately end up being much taller, but the plan is to prune them so they stay on the small side and don't overtake or cover up too much of the house.

Alright, now let's talk about the porch! There is still some things I would like to do here, but we have come a long way!! This is something that wasn't in our original landscaping plan, but we asked for after the presentation- two urns to flank the front door. We've had the large rug and welcome mat here for awhile now and it always felt like they were just asking for some urns!

home sweet home rug

I love the scale and shape of them, but I'm considering painting them...they are a little yellow so I may paint them an off white or just an actual white. I am also itching to swap out the plants inside, I love the ivy creeping out, but the snake plants (the spiky ones in the middle) have got to go. They are a bit more bohemian looking than I would prefer.

Something else I hadn't discussed were the addition of the gas lanterns. These were a huge process- that included having a plumber come run multiple gas lines, large holes of sheetrock being cut out in our foyer, and I'll definitely plan to share more about those in another post, but I did want to mention them. They are stunning and we love them!

Now, if we zoom out a bit and discuss the area directly to the right of the front door- we have the second espalier. You can barely see it...

But here's a close up, this one is a large X instead of the diamond pattern (which I think would have been too busy on this smaller wall), and you can see where the wire is running that will ultimately be climbing with more jasmine!

Grow jasmine grow! These two walls are going to be so pretty, I can't wait until they fill out!!

Continuing on to the left side of our home we have the same layers of seasonal color, boxwood, liriope, and ferns...

We did make one small change from our initial plan, we originally were going to have white azalea on both sides, but changed it to variegated pittosporum as the second layer over here. The reasoning being that our old landscaping had azaleas over here and they didn't do very well, we're thinking the other side of the house gets more full sun so we're hoping they go wild over there *fingers crossed*.

Before we had super tall bushes blocking the rocking chairs so it's been nice that everything is now much lower and we can actually sit there and watch the kids play in the cul-de-sac. I guess once everything fills in we may end up blocked again, but it's nice for now.

Right next to the chairs we have a small rose topiary tree. Similar to the other trees, the plan is for it to grow and frame out the house nicely. This one is actually already blooming the cutest pink roses that smell AMAZING!

Then we have the new beds that were added in the front of the yard. The back row are rose bushes (these are blooming too!!), then some seasonal color, and a tiny hedge of boxwoods to frame everything out.

Last, but certainly not least- we have to talk about the trees- which were originally surrounded by some dirt/mulch...

Now we have this beautiful snow in summer jasmine that is going to fill in so beautifully!

My dream is for this to end up looking like my neighbor's house (which you can see in this post), so we'll see...some of the edges are already turning white and pink! But there's still a lot of filling in to do. I also wanted to mention that our grass took a beating when the landscaping crew was here, they also dug out several spots- some for drainage, some to place some new sprinkler heads, etc. It's definitely looking pretty rough, and I'm hoping that will fill in in the coming months as well.

So that's it! My favorite parts are the espaliers and the snow in summer jasmine. I will say landscaping makeovers are not for the impatient (um. me), waiting several months (years?) for all of this to fill in is not my cup of tea, but it does still look beautiful in the meantime. Let's check back in on it in the spring to see how it's doing, yes?