More of Our Front Yard

I recently shared the beginnings of a tour of our yard and gardens in our new home.   But I didn't get a chance to finish showing you the front yard - I can only put so many photos into one post before it gets to be too much - for me and for you!   So here are some views of the rest of our yard, as of April 2014.  Keep visiting to see the rest of the tour in coming days.

If you were standing on the front porch, this would be the view of the front yard to the left...

... straight out the center...

... and to the right.  

The flower bed that borders the retaining wall and the dry river bed (or, as my husband says, the DRB) is about 6 feet wide, and spans the width of the front yard.   In the center of the large clumps of bearded iris, there used to be a Bradford Pear tree.  But it had a quarter of its crown damaged in a storm, so we had the tree removed.   Bradford Pears are notorious for not holding up well during high winds, and so we decided not to replace it.

There are two trees that remain in the front border;  a beautiful magnolia tree...

and a lovely red maple.

There used to be four clumps of Nandina out in this border, too.  We had them dug up and moved to the back yard to screen our compost bin from view of the street.   There are still a lot of suckers where the clumps were removed.  We've gotten some of them cleaned up, but not all of them.  And of course, there are weeds.  Lots of weeds.   Always the weeds.

On the other side of the driveway, there is a very pretty Crepe Myrtle tree that is just started to leaf out for the season.  This was blooming a deep fuscia red last fall when we moved into the house.  And there are junipers flanking the driveway.   They're in fairly good health, though they could use a trim.

On the far side of the house, there are large (7' tall or more) shrubs hiding the air conditioner units and the propane tank.  We have a black aluminum fence around the entire back yard, and there are large Loropetalum shrubs along the sides of the fence all the way back (you can only see one of them here).

The grass in the front lawn and the back yard (but not the side yards) is Zeon Zoysia.   This grass takes a while to green up int eh spring, but once it does, it never loses its green color even in the hottest summer heat.   My husband calls it "The Carpet of the Gods", and it really is lush and thick in summer.  Right now, however, it's brown and dry.  I'm looking forward to seeing the lawn turn green again.  (almost everything that's green in the photo below is a weed invading the grass.)

Out by the street, our mailbox is currently surrounded by a weed-infested mulch bed.   One of these days next week I hope to get out there and clean out the weeds and put in some heat tolerant and drought tolerant annuals.

So that's the overview of our front yard, and the beginning of a series of posts on the whole yard. 

I'd like to make some changes to the front yard, most notably planting roses in front of the garage, and removing the many iris plants and putting in something different (not sure what yet).  If I have leftover time and money, I may add some more plants to the border behind the retaining wall, but at the very least, will try to get the nandinas cleaned out of there and stay ahead of the weeds.  

Over the next week or so, I'll continue the posts on our yard, and then hopefully begin posting about changes we make during the gardening seasons.

See the Tour of our Back Yard here.