Holidays at the Harris Home: A Tour of Our Yard

Welcome to our yard! I'd like to start a new series on the blog, showing you what's happening in our flower and vegetable gardens in our new home.

We moved to Raleigh, NC last fall on Labor Day weekend. We didn't do much to the yard last fall or winter, but I've been eager to get out into the garden this spring to get some plants in the ground and make the gardens our own.

We'll be doing this tour in parts - today, we'll focus on the front yard. But first, an overview. Below is what you see when you drive to our home. I love our property! Our home is a two story house (no basement), with two car garage with side entry. Our driveway is long, and has a great parking pad / turnaround in it so we have plenty of space.

In the front of every home in our neighborhood there is a drainage ditch designed to carry away rain water. Ours is the only one in our neighborhood that has been landscaped and shored up with a retaining wall. The wall makes our front yard nice and level, rather than sloping down from the house. My husband calls this area "the DRB" - the dry river bed. As you can see here, we're (perpetually) behind in getting the weeds out of the rocks.

The previous owners of the house put in all the landscaping here. Down by the rocks there are clumps of daffodils which were so pretty earlier this spring. The red maple is great too, very happy to have it. Two big shrubs on top of the wall are burning bush. There is a huge clump of bearded iris in the center - they used to surround a Bradford Pear tree, but we had to take the tree down last fall due to storm damage. At the very far end, there is a magnolia tree that has beautiful white blossoms on it in late summer and fall. In the foreground you can see juniper ground covers that flank both sides of the driveway.

Up by the house, there are lots of boxwood shrubs lining the foundation. In the bed in front of the garage windows, there used to be a large Loropendulum shrub that had been trimmed into a Christmas tree shape. It was kind of odd, so we had it removed last fall. This leaves the bed kind of empty except for some random perennials that have popped up this spring. So, as you can see, I purchased some Knock Out Roses to put in front of these boxwoods. (I've since planted them... will share in a future post.)

In this bed there are four large clumps of fading grape hyacinths and daffodils, and a bright golden shrub (not sure of the name). Behind the gold shrub there is a clump of some kind of perennial, but I won't know what it is until it blooms later.

Further down, still more boxwoods lining the front porch, and some large clumps of bearded iris. There are a few pansies left over from last fall, and a couple of clumps of daffodils.

And on the other side of the front steps, guess what? More boxwood! And more bearded iris! and another of the gold shrubs (do you know what it might be?). And lots and lots of weeds growing everywhere!!! Some more daffodils and pansies, and that's about it!

I like the boxwoods, and I only hope that we don't have to trim them too many times each year to keep them looking nice. I'm not sure about having so many bearded iris here, I'll probably dig and divide and move them later, after they've finished blooming.