Front Garden Tour | BEFORE, PROGRESS & 2024 PLANS! 🏡👩🏻‍🌾🌸

Hi friends! Embarking on a garden makeover is no small feat, and our 2023 season was proof of that! Join me as I look back on our 2023 gardening season, where we tackled a whopping 96 cubic yards of fill dirt (not to mention topsoil, and compost/mulch). 😅💪🏼 In this video, I’ll show you what our front garden looked like when we first moved in, the progress we’ve made in just one year, and spill the beans on our exciting plans for 2024. Stick around to watch the magic as we bring my dreams to life, one shovel and plant at a time. Subscribe so you don’t miss out on this transformation and inspiration!

👩🏻‍🌾 🌻 Lots more videos to come as my husband and I transform our 3 acre blank slate property our version of beautiful! Follow along for inspiration, gardening tips, and encouragement to get out and garden! 🌻 👩🏻‍🌾

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Music Credit: Epidemic Sounds

#gardentransformation #GardenProgress2024 #FrontGardenMakeover #gardenmakeover #gardening #gardendesign

[Music] hi friends I’m on my front porch because I want to show you my front garden and kind of give you an update of where it is where the progress is where things currently are what we’ve done and I’ll put some pictures up on the screen to kind of show you a little bit of where we started the before while it may not look a lot different on camera we have really changed the grade and the size of our front garden this is definitely progress tour we are nowhere close to where we want it to be but you know progress is just adding up so I want to show you what we have accomplished in the last year that we’ve been on this property and what our future plans are for all the different areas the previous owners built this property and had lived in it for about two years before we bought it basically a new build new construction the front garden had very little Landscaping it had one hydrangea a couple hostas and I I think they had thrown some like hearty mums in the ground if I’m remembering correctly so we really were working with nothing there was one magnolia tree in our front yard that was like that currently still is there it’s way up by the road and other than that there weren’t really any other shrubs trees perennials added the front garden didn’t go across the full length of the house so visually it looked very small in comparison to the width of the house so we really wanted to add a lot of soil and dirt to extend the line visually of the front garden and then because of because we wanted to do that in the slope of our property we had to bring in a lot of dirt to kind of make the grade a little bit more gradual the slope a little bit more gradual it is still very much a steep slope just because the way our house is built into the ground half of the house the basement is in ground and the other half is walk out you’ll see in the tour in just a minute so with that said we had a lot of fi dirt brought in a lot of top soil a lot of garden soil brought in and then Mulch and so that was pretty much our entire 2023 gardening season was spent on the tractor just our weekends and nights were spent hauling dirt shoveling dirt just trying to get the size and the shape of the front garden and also the side Garden which I’ll show you in another tour the way that we wanted it and the way that we felt aesthetically it kind of balanced the house we also didn’t have a set plan of what we wanted the front Landscaping to look like so it took us a little while to really get that in motion before we started putting some plants in the ground late last fall there are a few things in the ground now not very much but what is in the ground I think will help you kind of see the paths that we’re going to create and basically the different Garden rooms that we’re going to create now this front Garden is attached to the front of our house it is just one of many Gardens that we’ll have many flower beds that we’ll have so right now the front beyond that is just all grass we do plan to reroute the driveway and add planting beds along the driveway and there will be more planting beds up by the road more trees planted all sorts of things so lots will change so right now this video is just going to focus on this front garden so let’s go take a look I apologize if you hear barking dog it’s our neighbor’s dog so I wanted to start on this side of the front bed we have a front-facing garage which isn’t my favorite just personally so because of that we want to really kind of obscure the view of the house as you drive in because it’s directly what you see this garage is the first thing you see when you pull in so we are going to reroute the driveway and the driveway will eventually come see if I can show you without making you dizzy if you can kind of see those yellow flags the driveway is going to curve it’ll be a gentle curve to the road that way we can plant on either side of the driveway we’re going to plant trees I’m thinking possibly also a panical hydrangea hedge maybe Limelight primes and so when you pull in and approach the house from the road you’re going to come in this way and because of all the trees and shrubs you won’t get a direct sight into the house and we’ll kind of block a lot of this view from the road so the driveway will eventually curve in this direction the driveway is a bit of a mess right now just bear with us so is the yard we have put down grass seed last fall and some of it’s come up and we’re putting down actually right now my husband’s throwing down some more grass seed and we’ve got our fair share of weeds to deal with as well so initially I knew I wanted this front bed to change because the previous owners the bed didn’t start till like right about here and then it went to about where that bench is turned and went to the porch it didn’t even go beyond that any so we really took this whole bed and extended it way far out into the yard now these little like rubber stepping stones are temporary it’s just to cut down on the amount of dirt we track onto the porch because we eventually are going to create a bunch of gravel Pathways and I will show you those in more detail in just a minute but you can see how much just by adding this the size of the bed I think it just balances the front a lot better than if it’s stopped abruptly so much closer to the house so I think that was that was our first decision was to extend this planting bed and you can I don’t know if it’s picking up on camera it’s not real well but this from here to up here is a I mean it’s a pretty steep incline I would say I don’t know what in feet maybe like a five foot six foot difference in height from the bottom to the top so our we had a lot of work to do as far as grading this slope and getting that where we wanted it and then over here we brought this whole flower bed out here and you can see we have used some free chip drops to help build our soil up over here and it’ll eventually get covered with the same compost mulch blend that we use here just haven’t gotten to that quite yet in the process so I think the new size of the bed and the shape of it really balances the house a lot better the plan will be to take this area right here in front and it will be a gravel pathway that’s going to cut in front of the bed and it’s actually going to go all the way around the bed to that side of the house because to that side of the house is where our walkout basement is and we do plan to put a whole Woodland garden and Fire pit seating area over there so that path will be able to take you all the way around the house and over here you kind of see our little they’re like little Twigs right now but that’s our Orchard I don’t even know if it’s picking up on camera but that’s our Orchard and we’re going to just keep adding to the orchard so the path will also path through pass through the orchard but it will Veer off right here there’ll be a split and at this split it’s going to go up we’ll have to do some steps we’re not sure if we’re going to do stone or something like just railroad ties for now to create some steps up because it is about a six foot incline so the gravel will go up this walkway I’ll show you and it’ll approach the front door straight on it’ll be about 6 feet wide from either side the pathway way and then when you get up here it’s going to be a round a big round gravel Circle and in the center will be a planting bed and a large Fountain we’re not going to do anything tall because we don’t want to obstruct the view of the house but because of the grade of the land we could put like a good three or four foot tall Fountain right here and it still not obstruct the view of the front door so I think that would just be really pretty to have this path come up you’ll have a nice Circle that will kind of guide you around with the fountain in the center and area to plant around it underneath and then there will be a little short path off this side that will cut over to the garage area and you can kind of see based on where we have planted stuff we have laid out we originally laid out the circle measured it and everything but of course through the winter you can’t see it anymore but the mcari there will frame the circle along with that Arbor that arbori and muscari so you can kind of see the outline of where the circle will be and then that’s why the Tulips are lining the path so this will all be gravel and my idea is to create a couple little like room vignettes so bear with me this is a placeholder this bench will not stay there we were just using it to give ourselves like a visual idea which I highly recommend if you’re ever trying things out in your garden if you can find something of similar shape or size to put it in your garden and just kind of give you that idea of what it would look like similar to this pole we’ve been using as a reference point for the center of the circle for our Fountain so we can kind of see what all the views from different directions what they’re going to look like so we’ll have a different bench here one that fits more of the style of our house and garden but temporarily it’s just sitting here to kind of give us an idea so the circle will be right in front of this bench and we wanted to create like a little seating area here with some plantings around it so I have pees on either side for spring interest and um spring scent and then I have oh my gosh I’m blanking on the name oh my gosh IA I think these are sweet Henry IA if they’re not I will put the name of these on the um on the screen oh my gosh I can’t believe I’m blanking on these names but they’re they have very fragrant white blooms in the early summer and they’re one of my favorite shrubs I used them in my last property so this circles around the back of the bench to give you a little summer interest and summer fragrance and then we just planted this tree which is going to be just behind the bench and we’re going to train it we’ve already done a lot of lower limb pruning so that most of its growth goes vertical and it’ll just create a nice Shady spot which will kind of create this like whole little cozy room here behind the bench and this is a Venus Dogwood which is my dream tree if you can have such a thing I’ll put a picture of what the blooms look like but the blooms are like five to six inches they are huge big white dogwood blooms absolutely gorgeous and the leaves of this Dogwood are very dark green and glossy and they don’t really have that burnt look that sometimes dogwoods can have so I thought it would just be a perfect spot it’ll be behind the bench we do need to stake it I’m looking it’s a little little crooked it just got planted this week so that’s going to kind of create the backdrop for this little seating area where you could then sit and have a view of the fountain you’ll have these little vignettes of like the mcari and things planted over here we have a Japanese maple tree planted here and some um dwarf butterfly bushes around it and then the pathway to the garage so then as far as these beds I really kind of wanted to draw like a visual line up to the Fountain from down below so we did these dwarf Arbor on either side and the ones on the bottom are the Mr bowling ball are variety and those daffodils need to get moved they went in before the shrubs so we didn’t have they’re not in the right spot but around here we have some ailia I have this is a dwarf let me get on the other side this is a dwarf crab apple called uh I think what is it Tina and it’s supposed to only get like 10 feet tall 10t wide kind of like a lollipop shape so I just thought that would be the perfect size and shape for kind of right here at the entrance just a sweet little round lollipop crab apple and I’m really trying to focus on like the visual lines what you see and these are the Encore aelas I’ll have to put the variety up on the screen if I can remember but they a pink encore zelia they do have some deer brows damaged because I forgot to spray for a couple months in the winter it wasn’t thinking and so the deer had a little field day with my aelas but since I’ve been staying up on my spray they have not but you can see there are a few blooms coming so they didn’t totally eat away all my blooms but I’d like to create just like a little hedge these aelas get three feet tall three and a half feet wide and so that’ll just kind of guide you through this walking path which you could also take to get to the front I’m really sorry if I’m making you dizzy I’m trying to move slow so on this side we have Japanese maple that let’s see this one is Autumn Moon I’ll put the size this one gets on the screen because I’m not remembering but I do remember it is very small small and petite so it’ll be a nice just little ornamental decorative tree right here behind it we have some of the pugster blue proven Winter’s butterfly bushes and then my plan for this area with this giant span of blank wall actually the irises were here from the previous owner so they did leave those those irises are really pretty soft Lavender Blue so what I plan to do once we paint the house is I’m going to put three trellises up this wall and put some climbing roses which I think will be really pretty and then underneath I’m going to keep the irises and then in front of the irises I have three white pies that are going to go there we are painting the house hopefully we get to it this spring before the weather gets too hot for the summer but our plan is to paint it kind of a creamy a creamy white I won want to say it’s going to be white it’s not going to hopefully read white white it’ll read more of like a soft creamy I’m thinking more like French country kind of vibe So the plan for that once that’s painted is then we’ll put the the trellises up the front door is going to get painted really like a soft soft blue kind of like a French blue going with the whole French country theme So eventually we do plan to replace the front door I would like something that’s just a little bit more clean Lin simple not modern by any means but just more clean simple lines to it we do have light fixtures to go up here and replace these lights this is just a little shade garden and last year I filled this shade garden with hydrangeas these are the Endless Summer original hydranges which are one of my favorites so I just crammed as many hydranges in here as I could this is another Japanese maple let’s see which variety this one is all right I’m not going to even try and pronounce that but 20 feet tall 20 feet wide which it probably isn’t picking up on camera but there is plenty of room for this tree here and then I did put some brona down here and then three Chamas in the back because this is a very shady spot this is the Jax chamia so I think this Garden will be really pretty in summer when it’s all In Bloom and then the chameleos are evergreen so they provide Evergreen interest all year around so when you come out of the shade garden and you’re looking at the front all right it’s starting to drizzle on me so I’m going to go a little bit faster but so what the PL for the front is is I’m going to get probably three to five of these box woods and I want to do a mini like just a small mini curved hedge of boxwoods right here and I think having those on either side so if you remember I said this is all the walkway up is all going to be gravel it’s going to be edged on either side metal edging and then I think having those curved that curved box would head would just really frame it in nicely and behind the boxwoods are aliums so the alium bloom will peek up behind the boxwoods and then I also won’t have to sare at the alium foliage as it dies back we’ll just get the benefit of seeing the bloom and then also planted back there I have some perennial gar and these are the new Jen Independence boxwoods which I don’t know if you’re familiar with they are supposed to have better resistance to some of the boxwood diseases and boxwood blight and the independence variety specifically is supposed to retain its color in Winter a lot better and not bronze out so I only have the two right now because I’m trying to get a few more I have a nursery that is supposed to get some this week and give me a call if they do and then I can get that planted up which I think will be really pretty and I have some Lambs Ear planted here as just like a low ground cover and I’ll probably continue that down here so that on the other side of the Tulips there’ll be more right here in front we just have these dwarf arbores which I’m going to just prune into a long hedge so not individual balls and one day we really hope to Stone this the whole I don’t know what you call that the skirt of the house that’s what I would call it but we hope to put Stone on that until then when we paint the siding we are probably going to paint this as well just so it’s not not quite as yucky looking and I would love to cover the whole porch in stone or brick or something one day as well so going around to this side we have a few things planted here I have three more of the Jacks Chamas I have a little tin baby Daphne which hopefully one day will grow up they’re slow growing I have an oak leaf hydrangea here that’s just starting to Bud out so this you can see we really none of this existed that like I said before the flower bed stopped way over here so we brought all this dirt all the soil out to here and then we had some free chip chip drops so that we could just put chip drop down for mulch because we ran out of our compost Mulch and plus it’ll just help break down and add to the soil over time but we will eventually cover this with Mulch and it is an incredibly High Hill which was great for sledding this winter in the snow but I’m going to plant a lot of things that will help with erosion on this hill so right now we have some the blue star junipers dotted throughout I have a couple viburnum and it’s about a I don’t know I want to say a 15 foot drop so while these things may look small they’re actually much larger but I have three viburnum down there at the bottom and then this is a Black Lace Elderberry which I think will be really nice because of how large they get it will just take up this whole big space on this side of the house with its dark kind of purpley foliage in contrast to this Arbor VY which this Arbor only gets I think it’s like 2 feet wide and 12T tall which I think will be a really nice height focal point from the front of the house so we do have a ton of shrubs here that we have wintered over just plant waiting to plant out these are lilacs are starting to Bud up and they are the um Proven Winners Bloomerang dark purple so with those we plan to continue kind of this Garden Room over here we’re going to enclose this area with those lilacs all behind I’m really trying to focus on things that are fragrant at different seasons just so that when you’re sitting here on this bench it kind of you get to smell all sorts of different things I do have these Beauty berry bushes this is the Pearl Glam which has this dark purple leaf and the electric fuchsia um berries on them in the fall and I have three of them on three sides of the circle so one two three and then on this side is the Japanese maple so I don’t want it to be perfectly symmetrical in plantings but I am trying to maintain some sort of visual symmetry even if the plants aren’t exactly the same Jesse throwing down some more grass SE all right so it’s starting to rain and come down a little bit harder so I’m going to call it for now I really appreciate you watching this front yard tour I’m going to go inside and take care of potting up some of my hundreds of ceilings that need to be potted up but I really appreciate you watching thanks for gardening with [Music] me