Beautiful Landscaping

Posted On August 10, 2020

Make a Beautiful First Impression with your Landscaping and Front Entrance

Buying a house – Don’t be afraid of change

We bought our current house in 2016. Our daughter and her family had moved and I helped her get her house move-in-ready. There was a house for sale just before getting to hers and it kept catching my eye as I drove by. I didn’t think the place was especially attractive but it had one thing Jimmy had always wanted–it was located on a blacktop road–and one thing I had always wanted–an in-ground pool!

I was pretty sure my husband had no desire to move from the home he had built but I just couldn’t get this place out of my mind. So, one day as we were driving by, I told him I was interested in looking at this house for sale. To my eternal surprise, he said, “Okay, go and look at it.” I was so shocked that I didn’t really take him seriously until a week went by and he asked me if I’d made arrangements to look at the house. No I hadn’t, but I quickly did. I contacted a realtor friend, Sara, and she set up a tour. I also arranged for both of our daughters to come with us. I wanted to gauge their thoughts about us maybe moving within a mile of them.

None of us really liked the interior of the home, except for the layout, but the girls and I really liked the pool. They appeared to be excited that we might buy a house with a pool, even if it was very near them.

My husband and I have a rather unusual relationship, I guess. We have never EVER discussed major decisions much! We both agreed on the way home from the tour that we liked the location of the house but it would need a shop built for him and some interior changes before I would be happy. That’s about all we said. Then, a week later, he asked me if I had put in a bid on the house! Never in my wildest dreams, did I think he would seriously want to buy this house. He finally said, “I just want whatever makes you happy.”

It’s a wonderful thing to be married to a guy who says that and means it. And I knew he meant it because that’s what he has constantly done throughout our 45 years of marriage–always wanting to do whatever makes me happy. He likes to joke that “It’s your world; I just live in it,” but he says it lovingly.

With such a major decision to be made, I insisted this time that we seriously discuss it. So, we sat down and wrote down the pros and cons of buying the house and moving.

Pros – On a blacktop, has a pool, on one level, has a nice laundry room, near our daughters, just two miles from town, wouldn’t have to live near the family farm and watch the new owner make big changes.

Cons – Don’t like the exterior or interior looks, doesn’t have a shop, has a huge yard to mow, has very little shade, the landscaping is pretty non-existent, we would miss the farm we have lived by for all but one year of our marriage, it’s further from our church, he’d miss the neighbors stopping by his shop.

After 15 minutes of discussion, we decided to make an offer on the house. Sara said I was the first buyer to ever call her and say, “We don’t like the house, but we’d like to make an offer on it.” After some bargaining, we bought the house and moved in September of 2016. (I highly recommend Sara as your realtor in our area. https://www.coldwellbanker.com/Coldwell-Banker-Niedergerke-%26-Co-12123c/Sara-Jeffrey-465429a). The move was made much easier when our son and daughter-in-law decided to buy our former house.

I’ll write other posts about changes that we made but this one is about what you see as you drive up. That’s on my mind because the yard and flowers are looking beautiful right now even though it’s August in the mid-West. We’ve had lots of rain which keeps everything green and growing. In fact, it is absolutely pouring down rain right now.

I love a well-landscaped home with a welcoming front entry. One that says, “Come on in or just sit here a spell and visit.” Flowers and flowering shrubs are a must for me. Fortunately, there were already three well-established peonies, some lilies and Shasta daisys around the house. We didn’t plant anything else until the following spring. I did spend lots of time mowing our large lawn though. We have a five-acre lot and everything is mowed. I love mowing, but I’m rethinking that. This summer I’ve had to mow about every five days. All the surrounding yards drain off onto ours and the previous owners must have also applied fertilizer!

When Spring, 2017, came along, I got busy planting lots of annuals in pots and we bought a white birch, a tulip tree, two dogwoods, a Japanese maple and a flowering crabapple. We decided that we didn’t have the budget to buy any large trees. We planted them in April as they say you should only plant trees in months that have an R in the name. Things looked a bit better but not really what we were hoping for.

Want a bargain? Go to an auction!

Luckily, I read in a newspaper about a nursery that was selling lots of trees at an auction to make room for new ones. One extremely hot September day, I headed to the auction where I discovered that the trees were selling at greatly reduced prices and they were big! I ended up buying ten spirea bushes and 7 large trees, including a red maple and a sugar maple, for $240 total. A couple of the trees were marked at $400 each. Once we got the trees home, we realized they were far too big for us to plant. Luckily, a former neighbor, Terry, was willing to bring over his equipment and helped us plant them. I’m happy to say that most of the trees have survived.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

My Landscaping Tips

Be sure to plant shrubs and perennials that bloom at varied times of the year.

Don’t set plants too close to your house. Leave plenty of room for everything to grow. I often see people plant too many, too close to their house. In just a few years it becomes overgrown looking. Instead, be patient and give them room to thrive. Also, don’t block any windows with your plantings.

Plant shrubs and trees in the spring or fall in a month with an R in it. This advice is according to my cousin, Woodrow. Water them consistently the first year to get them well established.

Vary the leaf color in your planting choices. I love the variations of green.

Add some electrical landscaping lights. The solar ones are too dim for my taste. I have them down the sidewalk with the wires hidden by succulents. The outlet is hidden by the planter on the porch.

Use brown mulch for a more natural look. Never allow the grass clippings to be thrown onto the mulch.

Regularly weed flower beds. If you don’t, get rid of the flower bed! I generally spend about ten minutes a week weeding mine, so it’s an easy, quick task if you do it regularly.

Take a Guess

I think we’ve come a long way into making our home welcoming to all who drive up to the front door. I’ve included a picture of the house as we purchased it and another of it taken today.

Please put in the comments what changes you notice. I see eight differences.

What things have you done to make the front of your house welcoming? What’s your favorite part about ours? What would you have done differently? I’d love to read your comments.