Landscaping Update: Southside Yard

If you pull up into the driveway and park, you are on the south side of the house. Most people emerge from their cars and take the steps up onto the wrap-around porch and head for the front door. With the addition and its back door that leads to a short hallway and into the kitchen, I am much more likely these days to enter the house that way. (I do not like not personally using the front door more, though.)

The landscaping project has now brought me to this small portion of yard, that straddles the walkway to the porch and extends over to that new back (well, side, really) door.  Here are two photos taken prior to any yardwork:

Until I get around to bringing in a drainage expert, I'm going to continue to have that ugly black corrugated pipe carrying the gutter output across the yard and to the pavement.

Not quite two weeks ago, I talked about this area and what I was trying to do with it, in a blog post regarding "The Hard Stuff" about landscaping thus far. It is my long-term goal to till this entire patch between the two sidewalks, remove that rocky-packed-clay-crabgrass-wiregrass mess entirely, and refill it with good dirt. My first stage for that got me this far:

Not a small chore. This also gave me the chance to plant the oakleaf hydrangea that was recommended to me by Donna Whitley-Smith, and also three berry dazzle dwarf crepe myrtles. I filled in the rest of this area with a variety of spring bulbs (but since I'm on the road now I don't have my notes to tell me which bulbs I planted there).  I may or may not see anything come of them this summer; I think my planting occurred rather late for them to produce much.

Last week I decided to get busy tilling up another portion of this plot. It was hard going yet again, kicking my hiney, and it also kicked the tiller around a bit when I kept hitting some of this buried treasure (as pictured below).

A couple of days ago, before hitting the road for my work this week in Virginia, I carted off all the tilled yucky soil and brought in a portion of topsoil to replace it. I also finally mulched around these new shrubs. Last week I also bulked up with retaining wall brick the small new planting bed to the right of the porch sidewalk.