Front Yard Before and After

I'm trailing about a week behind on posting updates but since we spent most of this weekend doing basic organization and house maintenance (plus building a side fence and gate for one neighbor and then helping to assemble outdoor furniture and a grill for the other neighbor...because we are the neighbors who own all the tools...), it's probably good that we have something to post!  Last weekend/week, we spent a good bit of time (mostly) finishing up the front landscape.  That meant planting the remaining trees, adding landscape fabric to the flower/grass beds, and mulching everything to keep it nice and tidy.  And it all adds up to some good before and after pictures below.

Just for effect, let's start with a "before" picture from last summer.  The second story is built but this still looks very much like a construction site...

And then it looked more recently like this:

And now this!

Since this blog has proven useful for our own records (and perhaps it'll be interesting/useful to others), here's the rundown on what we planted: most of the grasses are maiden grass, with some smaller blue arrow grasses in between.  The trees are: a plum thundercloud (the red one on the corner), three heritage birches (interspersed with three burning bushes), and a stellar pink dogwood in front of the window by the porch.  The evergreens to the side are a mix - we planted three smaller and two taller Emerald Greens, one Spartan Juniper, and two Green Giants.  Along the rock wall, we planted phlox (in scarlet, emerald blue, and white delight), "beyond blue" fescue, and Japanese garden juniper.

Here are more "after" shots:

Working backwards a bit, here are a few in-progress pictures:

Getting the dogwood in place

And planting the bed around it

Rock wall before landscape fabric and mulch were added

Getting better

And one more "after" picture!