I stood there looking at the dirt, and what used to be landscaping…thinking oh just a little wood chips and it will look great.  The thought process was correct, but three years later I was standing in the same spot and thinking the same thing.  Life happens, right?  A few other projects took priority and our poor dilapidated landscaping sat on the to do list.

{This post contains affiliate links, which means I may receive a commission if you click a link and/or purchase}

Finally, last year we took a break from our huge projects (like windows and replacing our entire roof down to the plywood) and focused on some of the less urgent projects like landscaping.  Just in time too, I was so sick of weeding and weeding and weeding.  With no wood chips, the weeds just grew right back.  It was a losing battle!

The biggest question is where to start?  How do you create flowerbeds and how do you design them?  When we moved in, the house had been rented out for the past year and the weeds were knee deep.  It took us til the next spring to discover that there was a cement landing behind the garage and a full year to discover we had raspberry bushes.  Our yard is not that big, but everything was just way overgrown!!  We couldn’t see where one plant ended and the next one began.

Removing Unwanted Bushes and Landscaping

First things first!  We began by removing bushes and plants that we didn’t want.  It’s hard to get an idea of what you have or create a vision of what you want it to be, with everything overgrown!

My husband is in the picture above…do you see him?  The bushes were way out of control!  Each year we trimmed them down to about knee level, and they just kept exploding.  By the end of the summer they would be back up to roof level again.  The decision came down to love vs maintenance.  We didn’t love them enough for all the trimming they needed….so we pulled them.

Actually removing them was a little tricky, the roots were pretty deep.  My husband ended up breaking one of his shovels trying to dig them out.  Luckily, we rented a DINGO to dig out a retaining wall by our playhouse.  So we made a slight detour and dug out the remaining roots that were giving us trouble.

Finally, we could say good bye to the bushes!!  I can’t lie….I won’t be missing this view from my kitchen window!!!

When we moved in, I was so excited to have lilac bushes!  Our lilac bushes had been very neglected, but the love for them far outweighed the maintenance….so they are definitely staying.

Once I started trimming a little, I discovered two metal plates identifying Dwarf Korean Lilac bushes on both sides of the larger lilac bush.  Those are beautiful in the spring too and smell so wonderful!  It may take a couple of years to get all the lilac bushes into manageable shapes, but totally worth it.

Click here to check out my new eBook: The Ultimate Plant Guide To Decorating!

Cleaned Out

It felt so good to get all the landscaping cleaned out!  As I mentioned above, we discovered some really nice plants….hydrangeas, rose bushes, hostas.  Once everything was cleared out, we could see that we had a lot of great plants to build our landscaping around.

We also discovered that landscape fabric was in most of the beds, it was old and all ripped up…so we pulled it out.  Rocks were also found in some of the flowerbeds, they must have had landscape rocks at one point.  Oh joy!

Moving into a house with a very overgrown yard can be overwhelming, or if you are ready to make a change in your landscaping….that can also be hard.  Break it down and start by removing what you don’t need.  It’s amazing once you have everything trimmed down and cleared out, you can start to envision what needs to be done or what would look good!

Next week check out Part 2 of our landscape project: Edging and Shaping our flowerbeds!

Share this post on Pinterest!

Need some tools?

Thanks for checking out my post!