Results of Our Outside Labour

One of the projects I had wanted done was to have the path to the front door moved.  To get to the front door before you had to walk up the drive way and then in front of the flower garden.  Very uninteresting and made for a ho-hum look to the property.  I wanted the path done in tumbled stone but we could not afford that so utilized the paving stones we owned.  Richard curved the path as you see here in the picture.  We found the bamboo fence type product in the Dollar Store and added that along the edge, plus white rock in the gaps the paving stones left when curved, we also utilized old brick that we either dug up or rescued from the company that handled the safety issue of our chimneys after they caped them off.

On the left side besides the two red wood dogwood shrubs we have added two nine bark shrubs which have burgundy coloured leaves (see picture below), these will be a nice contrast to the green dogwood and white house.  Also on the leftside are Day lilies, Liatris and Tiger lilies. We have a small garden in front which off sets the path which I like.

Richard working on leveling the last paving stone

We pruned the apple and crab apple tree and the saskatoon bushes, plus cut down the front hedge and will decide later what we ultimately will do there, whether remove the hedge completely and build a small picket fence or let the hedge grow and keep it within two to two and half feet tall.

Nine Bark shrub

 After the hedge was cut down we were left with a bare piece of ground that had been covered by a very thick hedge.  Richard had a great idea to plant one of those wild flower mixes in the area and this is what we ended up with.  We are really hoping that the poppies and bachelor buttons will reseed themselves.  We had a ton of people stop and complement us on how pretty that part of the garden looked this year.

Wild flower mix

With the hedge cut down

This is how the back, front corner looked with the hedge down and pond completed.  This winter someone has very kindly  knocked out that far end of our fence. 

Blueberry bushes

 We added three different types of blueberry bushes this year next to the saskatoon shrubs.

weeping cherry tree

 I never really know what to do with this weeping cherry tree but each year it appears to thrive even though I don't know what I am doing with the pruning.

Hops and Virginia Creeper

I discovered that the old Virginia creeper has revived this year and at this point in time I have been keeping them separated from the hops.  Hops are like a weed and it just takes over that whole corner of our garden.  Richard loves them and they do start from the ground every year and make that corner of the garden very green.

This was my surprise gift from Richard, I fell in love with a similar one the previous year and Richard found the identical one this past summer.  The only problem we had was with yellow jackets, we never did find the nest but did find a solution using a wasp trap.




I am glad we took the summer to stay home having a late vacation.  It gave us lots of time to work in and enjoy our garden.  We finished the front path, had fish in the ponds and got to enjoy all our new lilies, plants and shrubs.