Front Lawn Transformation: Planning Stages

The time has come...to get rid of our front lawn and start a more water-wise, environmentally friendly landscape.

Our house, when we bought it, came with a very tiny--but very attractive--lush green triangle of lawn in the front yard.  The previous owner was obviously a lawn man, and the grass was golf-course perfect.

Awesome and I are NOT perfect lawn people.  I love gardening, as you know, but in a more meadow-like, wild, natural, and free way than the more manicured garden usually associated with lawns.  And Awesome, well, he loves the park-like lawn in theory, but since that requires a lot of work, it just isn't going to happen.

Four years and a Northern California drought since we bought the house, and the front yard triangle is a lot more brown than green.  Unless you count the weeds.  Those are green.  

I've been dreaming of transforming the front border since even before we moved in.  My roses and picket fence are crying for the company of a lot of cottage garden plants. And the "lawn"...well, it just has to go.

We are lucky to live in a town that has a Cash for Grass incentive to give homeowners money for replacing their lawns with water-wise plantings.  The program offers $1 a square foot for replacing the lawn.

We are unlucky to have such a tiny lawn.  It probably isn't worth the twenty bucks we'd receive to go through the approval process.  So we aren't going to go that way.  However, if you live in the Bay area and have a larger lawn that you'd like to replace, I'd recommend checking the program out.  It seems like a great deal.

This is what our yard looks like now:

Ugh.


This is what I'd like our front yard to look like:

Image from http://www.finegardening.com/front-yard-garden-no-time 

(Yeah, yeah, I know my yard is the size of a postage stamp, but it's still possible!  On a miniature scale.)

I've been researching steps to get the soil ready for planting.  There are several methods to choose from, some involving herbicides and shovels.  It seems to be highly recommended to sheet mulch your lawn, which basically means covering the grass with a thick layer of newspaper and compost, and waiting for a season before planting.  That would be a great method for us, if it was fall and the lawn was in the back yard, but I want the place to look better, not worse.  I found one site that says you can use the same method, but cut holes through the newspaper for the plants you are adding, so they can get established while the compost is doing its thing.  That's what I'm planning on doing, because I need somewhat-instant gratification in this case.

Our waste management offers organic compost that is made from the yard waste they collect.  It costs about $8 a truckload, so economically it's the way to go.  Of course, we have to borrow a truck to get it and spend all day shoveling it, but it's still worth it.

Plant criteria:
Must be able to withstand semi-drought conditions
Must be a reliable performer--no prima-donas in my yard!
Must love hot and sunny conditions but also tolerate afternoon shade
Must be perennial
Should be evergreen (a few deciduous plants are allowed, but I want the garden to look nice all year)

Possible plants:

Lavender:

Image from www.growinginmygarden.com 

Easy to grow, hard to kill, lavender looks nice all year, and blooms for at least six months.  Bees love it, and it is a cottage garden stand-by.  It also is an herb, so its usefulness is basically endless, which is a plus.

Rosemary:

Image from http://gardeningsolutions.ifas.ufl.edu/plants/edibles/vegetables/rosemary.html

Another wonderful herb, I already have several rosemary plants, and love it for its ease and reliability.  Plus the wonderful smell--rosemary is a great anchor plant for any garden.  Both the upright version and the trailing version would be good for my front lawn space.  I may just transplant the plants I already own.

Thyme:

Image from bonnieplants.com

Thyme is a very versatile plant.  It comes in a variety of sizes and colors, so I may have a couple of different kinds, depending on my needs.  Thyme can make a great ground cover, and in my experience, it will sometimes reseed itself too, so one plant becomes 20 plants.

Russian Sage:

Image from dallasgardens.com

Russian sage thrives in our area.  It is being used more and more as a landscaping plant, and looks good most of the year.  I don't know if it's evergreen or not, but since I will probably only have one plant anyway, I'm not going to worry about it.

Salvia:

from galleryhip.com

from parkswholesaleplants.com

from gardencoachpictures.wordpress.com

The salvia family is huge, so there are lots of choices.  I'll probably choose a few varieties and colors.  Salvia is another performer, and like the above plants, is easy to grow and reliable.

Guara:

from gardenality.com

One of my personal favorite flowers, I have never grown guara but I love it!  It's so pretty.


There are so many other plants I could choose from.  These are just a few that I know are foolproof and do well in my area.

Obviouly, we have a lot of work to turn our plans into reality.  I'll keep you updated as our new garden unfolds.

Inexpensive Kitchen Remodel

When you own a fixer-upper, there is always something that needs to be repaired or upgraded. Or added. 

Most of these jobs aren't fun, like the new roof or the anti-termite treatment. 

However, in the long list of never-ending, ever-multiplying, must-be-done-now jobs, my favorite to date has been my cheapo kitchen remodel. 

When we bought our house, the kitchen had decent builder-grade oak cabinets.  They weren't what I wanted or what fit the era of the house, but it was too expensive to change them out. I left them for a couple years while we tackled more important projects. 

Finally I decided to jump in and fix up my kitchen. After lots of research and some advice from a helpful Home Depot sales person, I got a Rustoleum Cabinet Makeover kit. 

I followed the directions on the kit from start to finish. 

The job took me a really long time. The instructions on the package said that you could finish a smallish kitchen in a weekend but I'm not sure that would really be possible if you did a good job. Anyway, for whatever it's worth, painting my kitchen cabinets took me about a month. 

This job is not for the faint of heart. However, it's definitely a great way to cheaply get an updated kitchen. 

I could have sped up the process by skipping the insides of the cabinets, and the doors would have been so much easier to paint if I could have spread them out in a garage. By the end of the summer I was sick of painting, but I would totally do it all over again if I had to. 

Here's the sink area ready for a party I threw. I can't believe how much brighter and cleaner the place looks. 

Here's by the door that leads to the back yard. I love it!

So, if you have a kitchen that isn't exactly what you want, but don't have thousands of dollars for a complete refitting, consider painting your cabinets. You'll be surprised by what a huge difference it makes!

5 Areas to Improve in My Home

When you move into a fixer-upper, there is a never-ending list of things that need to be updated, repaired, or made.  My husband and I have made lots of progress, but we tend to get snowed under with all the jobs that need to be done NOW! 

Periodically, I take inventory of all the things that still need to be done.

Then I get completely overwhelmed and have to take a break and have some coffee (if only!). 

What works best is to take a step back and choose a handful of areas to improve.  Here are my 5 major areas that need help:

1.      Back Yard: (the job that never ends!)  When we moved into our house, the back yard was ready to go in a lot of ways—for a much different family than ours.  There was a nice big porch (which I love), a paved patio, a pergola, a postage-stamp-sized lawn, and tons of gravel.  There was no usable space for plants, flowers, and the huge garden I had been dreaming of.  (There also were no weeds back then). 

 3 and ½ years later, we’ve made lots of changes.  We’ve moved miles of gravel, hauled several trucks worth of compost, and built raised boxes for my garden.  I’ve planted a lot, mainly vegetables and herbs, with a few roses thrown in.  We put in one irrigation system, and have plans to add another.

 We’ve also added to our collection of patio furniture so we have a comfortable place to hang out during beautiful Napa Valley weather.

 I still feel like we are fighting a losing battle in the backyard.  I have dreams of it being a beautiful, peaceful place where we can relax, entertain, and grow lots of food.  I also want it to all be easy to maintain, since we both work long hours and don’t want to spend every waking minute weeding. Sadly, the weeds grow sprout almost as quickly as I pull them. 

2.      TV room:  This is definitely the Man’s room.  It’s not pretty.  It is hard to keep clean.  There’s lots of computer equipment, weights, and guy stuff in there.  I don’t like it.  ‘Nuff said.

 3.    Spare room:  Other than the bathroom, this is the only room in the house that I have not really changed in any way since we bought the house.  I hope to turn it into a nursery soon, so there just has never seemed much point in decorating it at all.  However, I have found that a room with no purpose quickly becomes the junk-dropping zone.  Not good!

 4.      Laundry Room/Hallway Pantry: My nemesis!  Yes, I should be grateful that I have a dedicated room for laundry (I really am grateful), but this room is dark, dingy, and humid.  Plus, it’s usually a lot dirtier than this.  I really hate laundry, and this room has not made it easier.

 5.      Shed:  When you have no garage, you either need to have very little stuff, or good storage (or preferably, both).  Our shed is tiny, has very little shelving, and is sort of a black-hole for our belongings. 

     The best solution I can think of, short of another shed, is to install lots of shelving and other forms of storage.

So, there are some of the major areas that we need to improve. I'm not sure where we'll start working. Now we're building a run for the chicks so we'll see what we feel inspired to begin after that's finished.