DIY Landscaping 🍃

Bernice Baran
Aug 28, 2017
3 min read

So today Narcis and I shared another ‘first’, we did some landscaping in our front yard! We moved into our home a year and a half ago and still didn’t have any landscaping done besides grass. We had absolutely no idea where to start so of course we started off with Pinterest. We wanted something simple and clean cut, just a few shrubs, nothing too major. I honestly didn’t really find anything on Pinterest that I liked as an overall (that’s a first) so I can’t really show you guys an idea of what I was going for but here’s an idea of the kind of bush we wanted to use.

Our next stop was Lowes, we basically just went in and looked through all the different types of shrubs and trees. Narcis wanted a certain look where we could trim them to look more square so for that we chose the Northern Charm Boxwood. I think these are very popular, I’ve seen them around throughout the neighborhoods a lot, so I’m just gonna cross my fingers and hope they grow nice and big! We ended up getting eight of these and two of the Emerald Green Arborvitae trees. We still have a little extra room on one side so maybe someday we’ll add a Cherry Blossom or a W eeping Willow tree to that end.

Here are a few photos that I took during the process and after we were done. We raked the grass of the section that we were planning to put mulch on and evenly measured out our bushes to dig our holes. They say to put them about four feet apart but we only put them like two lol, not sure why. I guess we were a little nervous that they wouldn’t grow that big. I’ll have to update this post in a couple years when my bushes grow.

So anyway, we dug our holes deep enough to leave the plant about one inch above ground level and then covered them back up with the dirt. Our gutter pipes were actually right where we wanted to plant the bigger trees, so Narcis dug all the dirt out and had to rearrange the pipe to make room for the tree. We added mulch over the dirt because it looks nice and I’ve been told the mulch helps keeps the moisture in which is necessary for the first year of growth. If you do use mulch, make sure you don't cover the entire base of the plant because it can actually suffocate your plant! We may even add some stones around the mulch, but honestly the stones can probably wait until the bushes have grown a little.

Initially I did want a little more than this, I wanted some sort of Hosta shrub in front of the boxwood bushes but since they're so small right now anyway, Narcis convinced me to just do this first. We'll let them grow a little and we’ll go from there. I do also LOVE Hydrangea bushes and Peonies, of course, but I figured we could always do them next summer since it is almost September already! Anyway thanks for reading Loves, I'll make sure to keep you updated on how my baby shrubs grow!