Our Backyard Progress & Plans

It's always been a dream of mine to have an amazing backyard. I've always wanted a backyard we can play with the kids, entertain our friends, watch movies under the stars, grill amazing food and grow our own veggies. I want our backyard to feel like an extension of the inside our home. Since our home sat empty for almost an entire year and was a construction zone, our backyard was thrashed (trashed is probably a more accurate word) just like our front yard. We had several trees in our backyard, after much debate decided to remove many of them. Most of the trees were unhealthy or too close to our phone lines (hello old home with low hanging phone & cable lines) We decided we wanted to start with a clean slate and bring more shrubs and a tree of two over time, but I'll get to more of that in a few.

Progress pictures are always most fun we you see where we started right? I looked though my phone and computer and sadly was unable to find pictures of our backyard with the trees in place after moving back home, anyways in the pictures below clearly shows the sad state of our backyard. Here's a wide shot of our backyard taken with my iPhone, the french doors on the left lead to our master bedroom, to the right of the french doors are Avery's twin windows (so happy we went that route!) and the door off our patio leads into our mudroom / laundry room area. 

After removing those trees, we decided we want and expanse of lush green grass with a border along our fences for shrubs and possibly another tree in the future. The backyard underwent major prep work: grinding tree stumps, soil prep and sprinkler system overhaul and finally sod went down. We went thought a local company called Delta Bluegrass for our sod and bought over 2400 sq feet of sod for our front and backyard, we also had them do the installation. The installation of the sod was seamless and quick, when we installed sod last time Hasani did the installation, but since we had so much sod to install this go time, it only made back breaking sense to get the job done quick. 

Here's our backyard now (some of the pictures are recent and a few, a few weeks after the sod was installed) Our sod has grown in nice and thick, and so so green! We planted shrubs in the garden bed in front of Avery's bedroom windows. Ideally I'd like to add even more flowering shrubs this Spring. 

I love hydrangeas, in the past I've planted a few only to watch them die days later. I decided I'd try one last time and planted two hydrangeas on either side our our french doors. I planted them in October, they looked dead over the winter and now are growing back, and getting bigger each day! I fell in love with Limelight Hydrangeas after Pinning these pretties, I want to plant some Limelight Hydrangeas along the left side of our back fence. I love the size of those hydrangeas and think once they take off and grow, they would add so much color and privacy. If they do well, I'll be planting more and more! 

This Spring, we'd love to add a vegetable garden (more details & location coming next week) along with making a trellis for vines and added privacy. We bought a fire pit and not need to select a perfect location in our backyard. We also want to add patio furniture for outdoor dining and lounging along with potted plants. 

This weekend Hasani and I  are taking advantage of our Spring weather will be doing lots of yard work: pulling weeds, planting flowers, shrubs and prepping for our vegetable garden beds.

What do you think our backyard transformation? Are you working on any yard related projects this weekend?