Landscaping Lessons the Hard Way

When my husband and I first bought our house, we wanted one major thing–a yard for future kids to run around in. The problem was, although the backyard was large, it was doughnut-shaped with a ton of trees in the middle. For the first three years, we lived with it, tried to plant azaleas or tulips to make it pretty. But it always resembled a clump of the ugliest stick trees known to man. You know the kind–the ones that have no branches at all for the first twenty feet; then they have tiny little scrubby branches at the top. Ugly with a capital Ug.

So one day we decided to get rid of them. We called our tree removal specialists (aka Lumberjack Bob) and found that it wasn’t all that expensive to do the job. We removed 17 trees and opened up our yard. It amazes me what the difference became. We now have an airy, open yard with tons of space to put flowerbeds.

I am guilty of planting flowers and shrubs wherever I think they might look good instead of actually reading the tag. My engineer husband is obsessive over the location of the plants–”Honey, the sedum requires full sun, NOT shade. Move it 6.2475 inches to the left.” At which time, I whack him upside the head with the shovel.

No, seriously. He’s teaching me the ins and outs of landscaping. I’ve learned which plants do well in shade, which ones don’t, that spraying Round-up on my tomato plants instead of Bug-B-Gon is a BAD IDEA…you get the picture.

My grandmother is a gardening whiz. Just for your enjoyment, here’s what HER backyard looks like: