The most important step for us was installing a wrap around fence in the front yard for the safety of our kiddos. I can now say I actually live in a house with a white picket fence. I love that it mirrors the fence in the backyard and that they were able to make the fence enclose the front porch. We have already spent HOURS of fun out front. I can rock or swing and the kids can play and there is no stress that they are going to run off.
The yard itself has had a big makeover as well. Sure, spring makes everything better but we had a jungle of bushes and a lot of dirt with a few sprigs of grass before. Here's a before shot of one corner of the yard which will give you an idea of how little grass we had.
We hired a landscaping company to help out because a) the job was bigger than we felt we could handle and b) seed really only takes in the fall so if we wanted grass for the spring and summer we had to sod. But things had to get worse before they got better...
The landscapers showed up and started out by removing the boxwoods in the front beds and started installing what was supposed to be a little path from the front gate. But they put it in and it looked AWFUL. I absolutely hated it, texted pictures to my husband who also hated it and so in the end, I asked them to take it out and decided to just plant grass. Not only did I feel like the path was ugly, I thought it ate in to too much of the grassy space for the kids to play in and also it would have been a pain to try to mow around.
It looks insane, doesn't it?!
After they dug up the path, they had to bring in truckloads of dirt so that the sod would be able to take. And right after they got all the dirt down a surprise storm rolled in and it started POURING. The poor guys had to take cover under our porch for about 20 minutes until the storm passed. And then it was way too wet for them to start working again. So, at the end of the first day when I expected to see beautiful lush grass in my front yard, this is what I was left with:
Hard to imagine that the very next day it would look like this:
It took a couple of weeks for the grass to stop looking like rolled out sod and for the bushes to grow in some but it is starting to take shape now. The azaleas bloomed, the hostas grew up and the hydrangeas just now have a couple of blooms on them that I can't wait for. I think as the plants in the front continue to grow and mature, it will really start looking nice.
Having this new yard has really transformed life for us. We spent all kinds of time outside swinging on the porch swing, splashing around in the kiddie pool, running through the sprinkler and playing ball in the grass. Having this yard space was such a big deal to us after moving from our house near DC with such a tiny little yard. Now on to the next big project...the back yard!!