Here is a shot of the "after" sidewalk, now that it's been widened, and landscape blocks have been added to better define the bed.
We need to finish the mulching and this bed will be done until fall, when we'll plant some larger shrubs in spaces we've left for them.
Along the front of the bed are hostas and hellebores. As you can tell, this area is mostly shade (this shot was taken at noon.)
That really is a long sidewalk! It is really starting to look nice. I cannot wait to see it all filled in. You are doing a wonderful job!
Awww, thanks! Yes, it is a VERY long sidewalk - 50 feet in fact. And when it was just three feet wide, it wasn't comfortable for two people to walk down it side-by-side. Actually before we got the shrubs out, it was difficult for ONE person to walk down it without getting tangled in the shrubs that leaped out at you, LOL.
We decided to hold off on buying and planting shrubs until fall, which is really the best time to do it anyway. And the hostas and hellebores should help fill in the front of the bed within a year or so; until then it might look a little bare, but after the crammed bed we had before, I'm starting to agree that less really can be more :)
Good idea to widen it like that. You guys have done a good job there. :)
Thanks, Kim :) These shots are a little dark; I didn't notice that until I posted them. I've got some easier-to-see shots in my journal here: http://davesgarden.com/editgj/viewentry.php?rid=7611
It was quite a shock to look back at the "before" photos side-by-side with these; I guess you just don't really "see" the flaws in your landscaping when you live with it :)
I think you are trying to get on HGTV. Great job and I love the rounding concrete blocks to the left. I bet the back aches from all that work.
LOL, Jim. No, I'm not counting on HGTV showing up at my door anytime soon (if so, they'd be a little late - where were they when we were doing all the backbreaking work?
We are blessed with two strong healthy teenage boys; between them and DH, they did a lot of the heaviest work (digging out the old shrubs, creating the trench on both sides of the walk, etc. But I personally set each and every one of those 155 landscape blocks and most of the bricks set in next to the walk. We pretty much crawled into the house every night last week, too tired and aching to stand up straight!
I think the walk is much more in scale to its length along the house now. It looks great! Did you set the bricks in sand or anything? We have bricks we want to use for something, but we're not sure how to use them to the best advantage.
Kim, we dug a trench deep enough for the bricks to set on a 1-2" bed of sand. Along the edge hidden by the landscape blocks, we used salvage angle iron from the construction site where we got the bricks. We put it in place, shoveled sand in the space, and laid the bricks, using a rubber mallet to make sure they were firmly in place. You really need an edge of some sort to keep the bricks from working loose later on.
On the side abutting the grass, we bought metal edging and fit it after we laid the bricks. It looks a little nicer than the scrap metal, and since the pieces fit together, it's a continuous seam running the the length of the walk.
By the way, for a bigger project like this, if you have a way to haul loose sand, it's well worth it to find a brick or sand/gravel place to buy it from. 50# bags of "play sand" are $2.50 each (which works out to $100/ton).
In comparison, a ton of loose sand is $25. (Ours sells it in 1/4 ton, 1/2 ton and full-ton increments; we used 3/4 ton for the entire project.)
That's all good to know, thanks! :) I would like to make some sort of feature using the old bricks in combination with river rock, just haven't decided what yet. There's too many perennial seedlings left to plant for me to be starting a different project!
Very nice!
Thanks, golddog - it looks like you took "the tour" (all the posts you made were to threads I still have on my watch list.) It was a labor-intensive project but we're VERY happy with the results. I think next year the beds will look even better, once the hostas and hellebores are a bit larger.
We've gotten a lot of compliments from the neighbors, which is also nice :)
The sidewalk is very long - right at 50' long, originally 3' wide, now it's almost 5' wide. There wasn't an easy solution to making the walk shorter, so we did what we could - the bricks seemed to give it better proportions, although it's still a long walk. And getting the shrubs cleaned up, grouped together and back away from the sidewalk has made it more pleasant to get to the front door.
The next step is to pressure wash/bleach the aggregate then use a special sealer to re-seal it (I figure it'll help tone down the red in the bricks, too - tie it together.) The sealer is $50/gallon, and it'll take two gallons to do the walk and porch. Definitely a fall project!
Ah, a good landscape touch. By placing the brick sideways, it appears to be a shorter distance. As length wise the reverse.
I too must stop looking as every pic I see I start getting more ideas and just not enough hours in the day. That looks great you have really improved the look from what you describe. That would be an awful long walk to shovel here in MD.
And an update two years later....
oh that's lovely! Its really starting to "settle" in and look beautiful! Thanks for posting this! Its such an encouragement for those of us who have a lot of little baby plants and bare space and "raw" looking stuff.
Thanks! That's the one big drawback to what I call the "HGTV mentality", that you can re-do your entire landscape in a half hour! It takes time and patience, especially if you can't afford (or prefer not) to purchase mature specimen plants.
This area has continued to evolve - the "before" pictures are particularly hideous, but even after we ripped out the old shrubs, put in the landscape blocks and pavers, that sidewalk seemed to go on for MILES. Just this spring, we re-worked the landscape blocks at the end of the sidewalk, and it's made a world of difference. We also added the small curved bed you can see in the foreground. It complements the other curves and it fixed a problem area (before we added it, rain water sent leaves and debris straight onto the sidewalk; now everything kind of stays "in its place".
Next up is some tweaking to the bed at the far end - more compost, some hostas and hellebores (I'll probably wait till fall with the heat we're having) and a couple fresh bales of pinestraw scattered on the rest of the beds (hopefully this weekend ;o)
Yeah, my DH had a case of that when we first bought this house. He didn't realize it was a patience thing. He kept looking at the back yard and saying, "When will it be DONE?" and I think now he realizes "done" isn't the goal, precisely. And going from "awful" to "little slice of paradise" takes *time*, 'cause you cannot rush Mother Nature.
He *did* get (once I explained) that smaller trees and perennials were almost always prefereable to big "instant effect" types, because they don't have the root issues and transplant issues and "grow up" where they are going to live. It helped that we had this discussion with a really good nursery man standing right there nodding, backing me up.
Gee, that's a lot of quotes, but I'm not going to bother to re-edit.
