Spring Intervention

Over the weekend our flowerbed and front porch received a Spring intervention performed by the family. Normally our front proch is nice and tidy and our flowerbed full or flowers and no weeds. Our flowerbed has come along way since buying our house a little over 2 years ago. We replaced the leaning brick with stone and added pretty flowers & hanging pots, installed a trellis, painted our front red (in addition to painting our house and installing shutters) which added tons of curb appeal. Here's how our gardenbed and front porch looked like last Spring.

We've been working on various indoor house projects and getting lots of rain, the front porch and flower bed etc have been neglected. Finally after pretending not to see weeds, dead plants & leaves and a dired up paint brush, I decided its time to stage an intervention. Yep this is how the entrance to our front door looked, can we say so un-welcoming.

I really wanted out bring various shades of color into the flowerbed and on the front porch. I stoped in Lowes, Home Depot & Wal- Mart since both our close to our house. For our flower bed I always try and look for pre annuls because they come back year after year. For our potted plants anuuals are fine, becasue its far easier changing those plants out. While at Home Depot, I found a really pretty shurb called sweet broom, it has soft green leaves and delicate yellow flowers. I knew the shurb would look perfect at the very begining our our flower bed. This will make the third plant we've planted in that exact spot. Let's hope this one grows!

Before planting, I soaked the flowerbed and we pulled all the weeds and added some fresh topsoil to the flowerbed. After planting the flowers we used one bag of mulch. New mulch makes a flowerbed look so much better. I also replaced the dead flowers in our hanging pots and pots on the front porch with fresh flowers. 

A quick sweep of the front proch and a little rinsing off of the siding and front door made a huge improvement. I aslo swtiched out our Fall / Winter rubber mat, with a mat simple door mat from Ikea. I think I'll add a little more personality to our mat soon. Here's how our gardenbed and front porch looks like now, interventions are good thing.

Thank goodness we performed this intervention before the hot Northern California Summer arrived. Our house feels more spring like and so much more inviting. I still have plans to add a few more colorful bushes is this garden bed as soon as I find the right ones. We also plan on added some more colorful bushes to 'the other side' our garden bed under our livng room window. But I'm looking forward to making some improvments to our backyard soon?

Have you performed a Spring Intervention around your home?