EXTREME Backyard Makeover | Dreamy Kitchen Garden Install | Before and After Yard Transformation

Transform a boring lawn into a thriving backyard vegetable garden! 🌱 In this video, watch our full extreme garden makeover as we build raised beds, improve soil, and create the perfect space for fresh fruits and veggies right outside our door. This dreamy kitchen garden install hits all the marks for our family! I hope you enjoy this before and after yard transformation!

#beautifulbackyardmakeover #backyardgardening #yardmakeover #GardenMakeover #RaisedBedGarden #diygarden

You’ll learn:
✅ How to plan a backyard garden layout
✅ The best soil and materials for raised beds
✅ Easy tips to keep your garden beautiful

🌿 *SPONSER*

Huge thank you to today’s sponsor, Bob & Brad, for sponsoring this video! Use this link to grab your deep tissue Shiatsu Back Massager with Heat for Pain Relief: https://bit.ly/3FTZFNr
For 10% off coupon, use code: BOBBRADBACK
*NOTE: When the blue button on the massager is turned on, the heating element is turned off. It does not have a cooling element.*

💻 *CONNECT WITH ME*

Follow My LTK Shop for more: https://www.shopltk.com/explore/AlessandraMacaluso
My Substack (for weekly emails with loads of seasonal materials and inspiration): https://livefortheseason.substack.com/
Follow me on Instagram: / missp290
Follow me on Facebook: / alessandramacalusoclt
Follow me on Pinterest: / alessandramac
And visit my Amazon shop for more inspiration: https://rb.gy/400rg3
💼 : Business Inquiries and Collaborations only, please email: amacaluso29@gmail.com

⏱️ *TIMESTAMPS*

00:00 Backyard Vegetable Garden Transformation Preview
1:44 Planning the Garden Layout + Removing Old Structures
3:58 Installing Fresh Soil and Organic Fertilizer
4:46 Selecting the Best Plants for Raised Beds
5:59 Installing a Moon Arch Garden Trellis
7:22 How to Relax After a Full Day of Gardening
9:30 Garden Progress Update: Plant Growth Results
10:15 Laying Stone Pavers for Pathways
15:00 Creating a Decorative Rock Bed for the Garden

🔗 *LINKS*

Cedar Garden Beds (we purchased 4 beds, size 8 x 2 ft): https://rstyle.me/+e1Sdt7lOQMIHVUEXCJRMAQ

Raised Bed Filler Mix I Use:
Black Kow manure (1 bag per bed): https://rstyle.me/+73tp_xFRelDdKinjOWfWMA
Miracle Gro Organic Garden Soil (2 bags per bed): https://rstyle.me/+TqTq_6_PXSuEcKE7inh3eg
Wallace Farms Top Soil (1 bag per bed): https://rstyle.me/+CzY8_hMi4aax9aoS97xecA
Organic Zucchini Seeds: https://rstyle.me/+ojeqMYwkYpRrXtZ1L60XXg
Organic Melon Seeds (variety pack): https://rstyle.me/+LM-5JcqwZStUggAIRiJMqg
Organic Cucumber Seeds (pickling variety): https://rstyle.me/+qRT5WFRCe0D4teB6gQbtBQ
Organic Cucumber Seeds (marketmore): https://rstyle.me/+qNYl49g91mO6EyBE6FgRKA
Moon Arch Trellis: https://lettucegrowsomething.com/product-page/moon-arch/
Moon Arch Trellis on Wayfair: https://rstyle.me/+UGOqOKKF3rroX-tycVf-uQ
“Grow Dammit” garden sign: https://rstyle.me/+vCEoO08dICnxu_MPWhzmNQ
Bamboo Garden Markers: https://rstyle.me/+UgDr5SjFao_KHr6XT6xb6A
Pavers for garden border: https://rstyle.me/+uNHt7LIQrCVFZr6ubbUF7A
Stepping stones: https://rstyle.me/+XdisvpxP1BoaeOkw1QiRHg
Landscape fabric: https://rstyle.me/+G1FriXam15siFWkA6egrhw
Garden Harvest Mesh Wire Picnic Baskets (set of 2): https://rstyle.me/+npeokek8iiaE3YCcqRpixQ

FTC DISCLAIMER: This post contains affiliate links through which I may earn a small commission at no cost to you

[Music] [Music] Hey guys, welcome back to my channel. If it’s your first time here, then welcome. My name is Ally and in this video I’ll be sharing with you a full garden install transformation from start to finish. One of the things that I really miss since we’ve moved into this new house is our backyard garden. In our old house, we used to have a backyard garden and I would grow all types of vegetables and fruits in that garden, and I’ve just been really missing it. So, it’s been on my mind to install a garden in our new home. And it just took some time to figure out which way the sun rises and sets, where would be the best spot for it. I wanted it close enough to our back door so that it was easy for me to go out and harvest things like herbs and fruits and veggies and also so that I could see it. I wanted it to be both functional and visually appealing. So, as you guys know, that takes time to really figure out how to plan things and get it exactly how you like it. So, I finally planned it all out. My husband and I executed the whole thing. We had a little bit of help from the kids and overall, I’m super excited to share it with you. We took a space on our lawn that was just really not being used for anything and we turned it into something that’s just so beautiful and I really can’t wait to share it with you. If you like videos like this, don’t forget to hit that subscribe button. Make sure that you have your notifications turned on so that you never miss a video. Please give this video a thumbs up if you like it. That really helps my channel and leave me a comment down below. Let me know what you guys think of the transformation. So, without further ado, let’s get into the video. So, after looking at our backyard and really thinking about where we wanted the garden to go, this area toward the tree line in the back is definitely the best spot for the garden. And we have a treehouse there that’s been there for a few years now and we can’t use it anymore because it’s falling apart. There’s a lot of nails sticking out in it and it’s just kind of run its course. The kids have gotten bigger now. So, it was a little bit bittersweet to decide that that is where we wanted to put the garden because that would mean taking down the treehouse. but it also wasn’t functioning for our family anymore. This spot is also perfect because I can see it from the kitchen and it’s easy access off the back door to the patio. So, after looking at so, so many garden beds on Amazon, I ultimately landed on this kit for cedar beds. The beds that I got are 2 feet by 8 ft and I purchased four of them. They were very easy to put together. I did all four of these beds by myself just using a rubber mallet as you can see. And they came with the wood slats and they have grooves in the end so they go in pretty easily. And this took me just a few hours on an afternoon before I got all four of them done. I ultimately chose the untreated cedar just because I knew that it was a pretty sustainable choice at least for several years. I know ultimately the wood will break down. And at that point, long term, we would probably replace it with stone garden beds, which is what we had in our old home. And I also like that cedar can actually help to repel pests like deer from getting into your garden and eating all of your fruits and veggies. And while I was doing that, my husband and my daughter were busy taking apart the treehouse. And it made me feel better that she was super enthusiastic to do it. She’s getting older now. And this treehouse was actually a gift from a company called Rock Solid. and they gift items like this to children who are in treatment. So, her and my son got a lot of good use out of it, but now they’re getting older and this just feels like a nice way to sort of bookend that chapter of our lives. So, now we’ve got this great big space to bring in the garden beds. And I decided that I wanted them laid out in two rows like we’re doing here. And once we had them in the correct position, we made sure we measured because we actually have a trellis arch coming. So, we wanted to get that right. We took a quick trip to Lowe’s to grab some soil and some fertilizer so that we can start filling the garden beds. So, I am leaving the front two innermost boxes empty. So, as you can see, I’m starting on this outermost box. And the reason for that is because the trellis arch hadn’t come yet, and I wanted to make sure that we could install it properly. And I knew that it would be difficult to near impossible to try to do it if the bed was already full. But, I also wanted to get some veggies in the ground. So, I went ahead and did this mix. I like to do one bag of top soil, two bags of the organic garden soil, and then one bag of the black cow fertilizer cow manure. And then I just mix that all together. [Music] And now it’s time to add some plants. So, I did some transplants this year and then I did a lot of seed for the first time. So, these are the tomato transplants and I get these from an organic farm and Mary the organic farmer, she runs Windrest Farm. So, she taught me many years ago how to plant the tomato plants and she instructed me always to take the bottom of that transplant container off and it’s actually all biodegradable. It’s really healthy for the plants. So, I just tear off that bottom part and then rip those pieces up and put them in the soil. So, now that I’ve got some tomato plants planted, I’ve got some pepper plants planted. I went ahead and got two cucumber plants. And then I also had a ton of seeds. So, I have all of these zucchini seeds. I did yellow squash seeds. I did tons more cucumber seeds. I planted some melon seeds. I even did some arugula and some bok choy along with some herbs. I did not get technical about spacing. I follow an account called Gardenary and she always talks about breaking the garden rules and really packing those beds. So, that’s exactly what I did and we will see how they turn out. Finally, my moon arch trellis showed up and I’m so excited because it’s absolutely beautiful. I have been wanting a trellis like this for years now. I finally found a great distributor online. I’ll link it for you down below. And they’re a small company. Everything came so smoothly. It went together really well. My husband and I put it together in about just under an hour. And we had a bit of an issue because the beds were just a little bit too narrow in order to fit this in. So, we had to actually lift the bed slightly and then put the base of the trellis underneath. It turned out totally fine. I was so happy that it all worked out. And now I went to work on filling those front two innermost beds. As you can see, there’s my daughter helping me. We went ahead and planted as many seeds as we could. And she’s relocating some worms that she found inside the garden bed. I added just a little bit of fertilizer and then worked that into the soil. And then it was time to finish planting. My kids and my husband actually got me this cute little kit with these garden markers for Mother’s Day. And they also got me a couple of harvest baskets as well. So, I like these just because it’s nice to be able to remember where you planted things. And then they also got me that sign, which will hopefully be very encouraging to all of our fruits and veggies. As you can see, the trellis is done. It’s looking so pretty. And after all of that work, both my husband and I really could use a little bit of a back massage. So, Bob and Brad, who I worked with before, actually sent me this Shiatsu back massager. It gives a nice deep tissue massage. It helps with pain relief and it even comes with a built-in heater setting. And I always love their products because they have a lot of quick start guides, but this one actually can do your lower back, your midback, your upper back, your neck, and even your abdomen and your thighs. I also really appreciated that they have this little cover that can help tone down the intensity if you’re feeling like it’s just a little bit too hard of pressure and you just want to make it a bit of a softer massage. Bob and Brad are both two famous US physical therapists who really put a lot of thought and care and detail into their products. I also have their eye massager and I use that on the regular. I actually had sty on my eye recently and I took out the eye massager to use that as well. It’s just so good. It’s so relaxing. So, I really like that this one has modes for both heat and cooling. So you can just have it do one direction on your lower back and then you can go ahead and hit that button that I showed you and change the direction. You can also change it from cool to hot, hot to cold, and just move around the placement of it. You can do it on your lower back. You can put it on your middle back, your upper back. It has a curved shape ergonomic design that is 4 in longer than standard massage pillows. So it is very, very comfortable. Feels great for a neck massage. And I really loved the abdomen massage. I had never thought to place something like this on your abdomen, but something about the heat and the way that it massages with the shiatsu method is just really relaxing. The same goes for the back of the legs. I also really like how easy it is to move it around and store it. So, I like to store ours right under our coffee table for easy access. Bob and Brad gave me a coupon code for my viewers for 10% off. I’ll put that discount link below in the description box. Thank you so much to Bob and Brad for sponsoring this video. Back out into the garden now. My basil has been doing so well. I’ve been making tons of batches of pesto. And as you can see, a lot of my seeds have sprouted and my cucumbers are starting to climb up that trellis, which I think just looks so beautiful. It really just gives the garden this kind of magical feel. I really love when we can incorporate nature into design and this trellis does so beautifully. [Music] Seems that those seeds for the squash have been listening to my grow damn it sign that the kids got me and the tomatoes and the peppers are starting to come in as well. [Music] Now it’s time to finally start installing that border around using the pavers. Okay, so these are the pavers that we just picked up from Lowe’s. And I really love the look of them. They all have kind of like this orange tone to them that you can see like peeking out here and there. And I really like how they’re irregular. They’re not like straight lines, which is kind of what we wanted. So the bottoms of them are actually flat. So, these should lay really nicely on the lawn. What we’re going to do is we’re going to line the garden all the way around with the pavers and then make like a little bump out in the front. So, it creates kind of like this visual interest like almost like an entryway, but the rest of it is just going to be like straight edge kind of all the way around probably about 2 feet out from the edge of the garden beds. So yeah, we’re just going to go all the way around with these guys. And then we’re going to fill in all the interior with some pond stones that we picked up from a local yard works over here. So that’s going to come next. And then I think that we’re just going to put some weed barrier down. I know a lot of people dig up the grass. They don’t want the grass peeking through. This is Bermuda grass. So honestly, this goes dormant in the winter. It definitely dies. So we’re thinking that if we could just put a weed barrier over it that it might actually be fine. rather than having to go in and dig out all of this grass. We also picked up a few of these larger square stones that we’re going to be creating a walkway through the garden with. And I’m going to arrange them in sort of a diamond pattern. So, we started out by weed whacking the grass around the garden beds. And I know a lot of you might be like, “You need to dig up that grass cuz you’re going to get a ton of weeds.” I totally get that. We did some research and we found kind of many different answers as it goes with gardening. But because we have the Bermuda grass and because it does go dormant, it does die. We are thinking that if we just put the weed barrier over it and then we fill it up with rocks, it might actually be okay. I know, famous last words, but that’s what we did. So, we started with the weed barrier, we fastened it down, and then I went ahead and placed that center stone. I feel like if we can get the center stone right, then everything sort of expands around it. So, we continued that pattern down the center aisle using that diamond shape. And then we went down the horizontal aisle as well and just spaced them out as evenly as we could. We didn’t go too crazy with measuring. We eyeballed a lot of it. I always feel like with nature inspired designs, it never has to be totally perfect. We started laying the pavers in the front entryway because we wanted to create that bit of a bumpout to give it some visual interest and to really make it feel like an entry point. And these pavers were so easy to work with. [Music] So, this is how it’s looking so far. I love the way that bumpout turned out in the front. I just think it makes up for a prettier entrance. Like, rather than just having everything straight, now it kind of just made it a little bit more of a formal entrance. So, as you can see, we went around the corners and we just rounded all the corners off, which was pretty easy to do with these pavers. These pavers are really forgiving. They’re from Lowe’s. I’ll link them for you down below. Um, this is not a sponsor or anything, but I’m just really happy with how these turned out. They also, you can see how they have like a hint of that terracotta color in them. And they made the curve really easy to do. So then we just kind of went all the way around the other side. Same thing around the back just kind of going um rotating how we were facing the stones every other until we got to the corners just so that we can keep them nice and rounded. And then we just kept going. We kept going to the end. And then, as you can see, I laid the stones in a diamond pattern going all the way down the center. And it is looking so pretty. I did the same thing around the front here. So, now we have stepping stones going in both directions. Overall, I think it’s looking so good. And then tomorrow we’re getting a delivery of smaller rocks to just fill in where all this landscape fabric is so that you really won’t be able to see anything else. It’ll just be smaller rocks in there. And then I’m debating I might actually also purchase a few of the creeping jenny plants and just kind of like cut those in and plant them in between a little bit just so that you have some more greenery to break up the rock. But I’m not even sure if I’m gonna do that 100% because we do of course have so much greenery in the actual garden beds. Either way, it’s coming out awesome and I can’t wait to show you tomorrow after we get our rock delivery. So the next morning, bright and early Yard Works came and delivered our rocks. So I ordered pawn stone and right now they’re covered in dirt, so they typically don’t look this dirty. You’ll see after we rinse them off that they’re definitely more of like a white kind of natural feel. I loved that they had a lot of color variation within the different rocks. So, we got to work bringing them over into the garden beds with a wheelbarrow. And then we just continued to spread them around with a rake, getting into all of those cracks and all of those crevices and corners until we had a nice full layer of stones. [Music] After just a couple of hours, we had all the rocks filled and spread throughout the garden. And now, if you remember, this was what our yard looked like before we decided to install the garden. We just had a nice flat piece of land. We had the old treehouse, and it really was just screaming for a kitchen garden in this area. And now this is what it looks like today. [Music] I am so so happy with this backyard garden transformation. I really could not be more pleased with how it turned out. I think that the stepping stones are the perfect accent. They create such a pretty visual interest throughout the garden. It feels like it has such a great flow. The plants seem happy in the garden beds. We’ve already begun harvesting things like cucumbers and herbs and squash from the garden. And it just feels so nice to walk out the back door in the morning and just see what’s growing. See what happened over the last 24 hours. Because in a garden, a lot can happen over the course of 24 hours. [Music] There really is just something so magical about having a backyard garden and creating a space where the bees are happy, where you’re able to pick some fresh food for your family and make fresh and delicious recipes. And it really just does bring such a sense of happiness to me. I don’t know, maybe to you, too. Let me know in the comments down below. There’s just nothing like something that is freshpicked from the garden. And when I see bees sleeping in my squash flowers, I know that we’ve done a really good thing. That is it for today. Thank you guys so much for watching. I so appreciate you guys being here. Please let me know in the comments down below what you think about this garden transformation, this whole install. Maybe what was your favorite part or if you learned something. Let me know if you guys have a backyard garden at home also because I love to see backyard gardens and I love to hear about it, what you guys like to grow. And again, it’s just something that I find so beautiful and functional at the same time. And for me in my home, in my whole design aesthetic, that really is what I’m going for. Things that are beautiful and functional because it’s about lifestyle. And I really think that how you live your life should play into how you design your home. If you did like this video, please don’t forget to give it a big thumbs up. That’s a free way to support my channel and it really helps. As always, I love hearing what you guys think. So, please leave me comments down below so that we can chat about it. And thanks for being here. I hope that you consider subscribing if you’re not already and make sure that you have your notifications turned on so that you never miss a video. Thank you again so much for watching and I will see you next time. Take care. [Music]