Garden Bed Revamp/Front of House Landscaping

We bought our house back in 2020. Although our house is great, there were some major upgrades that needed to happen inside and outside to make it ours. There were seriously some very interesting selections that came along with this house, and that did not exclude the yard and landscaping. When we moved in our front yard had a mulch patch over top of the septic lids, and there was a mulch bed that was overrun by weeds and grass, not to mention the bushes that were growing half way up the porch. To each their own with yard design, but it was not our own!

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I decided it was time to take on this project, as I did not want to see this every time we pulled up to our house. This one one of the first things we needed to tackle when we moved in. Unfortunately, this became a very extended project since we moved in and my workplace closed down and I found out I was pregnant, all within a couple months. Either way, we all face setbacks, and if there is one thing I have learned, goals can be a journey instead of a ride.

Bush Removal

The first item we decided to tackle was removing the mulch bed and pavers in the yard, and pulling out those huge bushes that were covering the beautiful front porch. In order to rip out the bushes, we dug as far down as we could around them, but they were definitely rooted deep. We could have just cut off the roots to pull this out, but we didn’t want to continue running into them throughout the redesign process, so we decided to pull them out completely. I’m sure there are more professional tactics to doing this, but ripping out bushes or trees is a messy situation. We wrapped a toe strap around the base of the bushes (you have to make sure you are at the base, and not just around the branches) and we hooked the other end to my husbands truck. With a little acceleration and keeping tension on the tow strap this method works like a dream to easily pull them out. We used a rake to get the mulch into a pile, and just scooped it up, put down some top soil, and seeded the area with grass seed to get some life in the dirt covered area.

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Rock Bed Removal

After we got the bushes ripped out and the mulch cleaned up, it was time to tackle the mulched garden bed that was up against the house. This became a much larger project than I had anticipated. Once I started removing the mulch, I was able to determine that there were layers upon layers of mulch and rock with weed matting in between. This became a much larger project than I had anticipated, very quickly. Let me tell you… layers of mulch and rock bed removal is not for the faint of heart, but the results are definitely worth it!

To start with, the more you can rip up with the weed matting will give you the best and fastest results. I started with a regular garden rake. I was able to loosen up a lot of the mulch and dirt on the first layer so I could pull up the weed matting underneath. Once I got a good chunk of the matting, I was able to pull and roll the mulch into the matting itself for an easy clean up. After this is where it got a lot harder. Below the mulch and weed layer was several other layers of rock and mulch with matting in between. I used the garden rake and a pointed (spade) shovel to lift underneath the rock layers and get ahold of the matting underneath. Where the matting was rotted too much, I was able to pull the matting to loosen all the stone on top of it. This helped the process tremendously! Once the stone was loosened as much as possible, it was time to start raking the stone out of the garden bed. I found this easiest with the garden rake and spade shovel for loosening where needed, but it really took some dedication and work. I pulled all the rock to the front edge of the garden so I could use a scoop shovel, rake, and wheelbarrow to haul it away (I would one thousand percent recommend using a double wheeled wheelbarrow). The best method for raking the rock into a pile was to drive the rake into the ground, and then start pulling upwards and back.

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Edging and Leveling

Once all the rock (or as much as I had the patience to deal with) was removed from the garden bed, it was time to start edging the bed and leveling all the areas that had holes and dips due to the rock removal. I created my edge with an edging spade (which is essentially a very, very flat shovel). I wanted to create a better edge for this garden bed, as the original mulch bed was just a straight angle from the cement walk to the edge of the house, and it was not appealing! I wanted to provide some curves and definition that would be character to the bed itself. I used the edging spade to create a base line for my edge that I wanted by simply pushing into the ground and pulling the shovel straight out to show a visible line without actually starting the edge. Once my baseline was created, I then visualized it from different angles to determine if changes should be made. I made some slight adjustments to the curves, but overall I was happy with the baseline, and started pulling my edge. When creating your edge, you want to take the flat spade and push straight down, about 2″ – 3″ down depending on the type of edging you are using. DO NOT push down at an angle, the shovel should be perpendicular to the ground. Once you create your depth, you will want to push the dirt in front of your edge straight forward to allow for space to work with your edging. We chose an aluminum edging to place for this garden bed, as it holds up strong, has stakes to hold it in place, easily bends, and will help with the rain water flooding the garden bed. With the edging, you will simply follow and bend the edging to follow the line created, and steak in every 6″ – 12″ depending on how solid your ground is. In order to level the garden bed, I used the garden rake, pulling dirt into the obviously low areas, and then pulling with equal pressure throughout the bed to fill in any small holes and break down any high spots.

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Planting

Next it was time to decide what types of plants would be going into this garden bed. We have very sandy and acidy soil, so only certain plants will thrive in our soil. Additionally, we have full shade half of the day in the front, and full sun in the later part of the day which creates a very harsh environment for plants. Azaleas love acidy and sandy soil, and can accept multiple variations of sunlight, so this was my first choice for adding some color to the front of our porch.

We chose a decorative grass, as these want full sun, but can thrive in sandy soil and many environments. I selected various different shade plants, including some beautiful coral bells. Coral bells are known to be shade plants, so I chose lighter variations of these plants that would accept more sunlight than other variations would. I used the coral bells as my front edging, and kept the larger bushes towards the back, creating a balance between the different plant sizes. One suggestion I would have in this plant selection, make sure you choose plants that thrill in the summer and the spring, as I have found my garden bed in the spring time is very bland and sad, and will need some additional choices added. Make sure, when planting your plants, for best results you will want to chose your placement, dig your hole, fill the hole at least half way with water, place your plant, and then fill in around leaving loose soil under the plants roots as well. This will yield less recovery time for the plants after completing planting. Give them a lot of love and water!

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Before and After

We still need to mulch the area to completely finish it off, but I have provided a nice before and after for you to view below (this has not been mulched to finish it off):

Please let me know in the comments section below if you have any questions on my process, my decisions, or if you have comments or projects of your own!

Check out my post on 10 Tips for Beautiful Potted Plants here!