Front Yard Renovation

When we first bought our house (and up until yesterday) we had these hideous purple vine like plants through the entire "flower bed" and around both of our trees in the front yard.  Apparently they are called "Wandering Jews"...  We knew immediately that we wanted to get ride of them and put down something totally different.  My husband finally decided yesterday morning to make that happen.

Here is a picture of the front of our house the day we bought it...

As you can see from the arrows in the picture, the purple stuff is EVERYWHERE!

Oddly, we have 3 really nice boxwood bushes on only one side of the house.  We made a decision this morning that we really like the look of the boxwoods and feel they match the "preppiness" of the house exterior so that's what we will be adding to the other side.  

For this weekend though, this is what we have been up to...

Our little fish decided to get out of the pool to help pull weeds :)

Yesterday, my husband took the weed eater to ALL of the purple stuff and cut it all the way to the dirt.  Then tilled the roots as much as possible to loosen them and doused them with a bleach/vinegar mixture.  This technique was recommended by the tree guy who helped us when a limb fell on the corner of the living room.   He said that apparently the purple stuff is hard to get rid of and that's the only thing he's found that will totally kill it.  Since Adam just put the mixture on there yesterday, I don't really have much of an update other that the roots were dryer today that yesterday. (Sorry bad blogger moment and I didn't get pictures of him working yesterday.)

Today, we headed to Lowe's and bought 10 bags of Scotts Nature Scapes Advanced Black Bark Mulch...yes I said 10 bags and it wasn't even enough! 

Purchase here!

We decided to go with the black because I felt like it would look better with the black shutters than the red or the brown mulch.

We also bought some Blue Hawk black 4mm plastic sheeting to use in place of landscape fabric to block out weeds (recommendation by Adam's boss).  We initially thought we'd be using this in the flower bed and around the trees, but realized after a FaceTime call with my landscape experts, my grandparents, that it wouldn't be the best choice in the flower bed because we would eventually be adding the boxwood bushes on that side as well.

Purchase here!

Once we got home (and after a nap for all), we got to work on the flower bed.  My husband pulled the rest of the purple stuff's roots while I used the shovel and dug the deep ones out.  By the way, gardening really is a work out!  Then we smoothed out the dirt and laid down 8 bags of the mulch.  It looks better already!

Bailey and I worked on getting the rest of the roots from around one of the trees while Adam worked on laying the mulch.

And here it is...

Loving it so far!  P.S. The little flags are left-overs from 4th of July but I love the patriotic touch they add!

The next step will be laying the plastic sheeting down around the tree and topping it with mulch.  Hopefully this will get done this week!

I hope you enjoyed this little gardening adventure and as always, thanks for stopping by!