Shopping the Yard

After we put up the fence in our front yard our garden needed some rearranging to create new focal points.  You may have heard of shopping the house before--going through the house and taking items from one room to use in another.  I used this same strategy but in our yard.  I shopped our front and back yard, digging up different plants and rearranging them in a way that made our garden look more unified with the new fence.

I used to not know much about plants.  After three years of working in a garden and even having a florist for a mom, this is the first year where I felt completely confident in making my garden work for me {hope for those of you who swear you do not have a green thumb!}.  I was no longer a slave to where the plants were placed or what was planted by the previous owners.  I could create a garden that I wanted and was pleasing to the eye without completely tearing the yard apart or hiring out.

I was having trouble narrowing down a look I liked.  Part of me loved the look of beautiful lush overgrown flowers peeking out of the fence while another part of me really liked a clean and manicured look.  I finally settled on clean and manicured as I found it most fitting for the size of our yard, style of house, and physical location.  

Just like when decorating inside the home, I wanted to create a layered look in our flower garden.  I started with the bigger and fuller plants in the back, some shorter bushier ones in the middle and filled in the smaller corners and front with annuals.  

We also received a free shade tree and wood chips from SMUD {our energy company}.  The tree helps balance out our yard and we used the wood chips in place of bark around the garden.  Though the wood chips were free, we did have to pick them up ourselves.  Let's just say there is not much that will keep my mom and I from taking advantage of free!

Excuse the balloons, it was a perfectly overcast morning of my birthday when I took these pictures!

Right up against the front fence are two shorter style rose bushes that will hopefully grown nice and full right up front along with some other filler plants.

We have not had any type of bark or dirt covering in our front yard garden since we put in a garden last year so finally having the wood chips makes the garden look so much cleaner and pretty!

The yard is all clean and prepped for the fall where it will hopefully thrive with some cool weather and rain.  It is so rewarding to see the plants get established over time and really grown.

Do you prep your yard for the fall?