Repair-It

This house needs like 147 improvements, and that's just on the outside. We had 10 trees removed last week and I thought I'd throw together some kind of feature on either side of the front porch.

Here is a before pic from November 2014: Started by weeding and raking/light grading by hand: Then I marked out a pattern for rocks. I went for something flowing and organic rather than just flat and parallel to the house. I also managed to mostly hide the downspout outlet with more rocks. These rocks were from all around my yard. Both sides. The plan is to plant some hosta in some pattern on both sides. Then maybe something contrasting between. Back fill the rest with cedar mulch. I have some pieces of slate I could put on the mulch in places to finish it and also some flat pieces to add a step to both the outside faucet/house and the oil fill on the other side. Or something along those lines. So we got 26 bags of mulch (2 cu-ft), a big bag of pete moss and a sandbox at Bennys. It all fit in the Ranger. It was not on the bump stops but it was pretty freighted (and hilariously slow). It rode and handled like a luxury car. An old luxury car.

Whoops, forgot to update this thread. Three weeks later I finished.

Dig holes deeper and about twice as wide as the root ball. Lay landscaping fabric down using staples. Cut an X over each hole. Don't step into a hole. Next, make a 50/50 mix of the soil dug up and peat moss. Use this mix to get the top of the root ball even with the rest of the ground and to back fill the sides. I used Green Mountain Boxwood from Home Depot. These were pretty small so they were only $18 each. I threw some fertilizer down also. Now it's mulch time. I used brown cedar mulch. Rake in to a 3-4" cover. If only the house wasn't also dirt brown. Decorative frog that we've had for years and I laid down some slate I had around to form a path to the oil fill. I also threw down some grass seed, fertilizer and lime. Water daily at night around 30 minutes (probably not enough for the grass). Some is starting to come up. I think I didn't put enough seed down.

Yesterday I finished the other side. Home Depot was out of the Green Mountain Boxwood so I had to go to Wilwood in East Greenwhich. They had some 2 gallon plants but they were $36 each! Sigh. They are a lot bigger so I guess I got my money's worth but I would have been fine with a smaller, cheaper one. I ran out of those nice slate pieces so I used these concrete-looking things which are ugly, as a path to the hose faucet. For now I will leave it.

After seeding, fertilizing, lime and watering, here's where I am at.
Becoming halfway presentable. Needs to be over-seeded in the fall but this is progress.