Flowerbed - Before and After
When we purchased our home, there were no flowerbeds or landscaping. The first area we wanted to fix was this hill next to the house. When they excavated to build the house and walk out basement, they created this large barren hill.
The only thing that would grow was weeds, and it was something of an eyesore because it was the first thing you saw when pulling up the driveway. The closer you get to the house, the steeper the hill gets. We always worried about one of the kids falling off it. Someone had built rough steps with bricks that were eroding away with every rain because the downspout would pour water across the hill.
We played around with different ideas and finally created a large flowerbed at the bottom of the hill with stacked rocks and a split rail cedar fence at the top to discourage children from getting too close to the edge. We tried adding a variety of flowers and shrubs hoping it would fix the area.
This worked for a few years, but we were still battling weeds. Because the hill is very steep closer to the house, planting has been a challenge as well as erosion issues. So, we started over…again.
We started by transplanting all the old flowers to another bed so we could save them. Then, we tore out the stacked rock wall and moved the rocks to another flowerbed where we wanted to create a small border. We had a large pallets of retaining bricks delivered. Next, we created a flat, level surface and started building a small retaining wall. Moving all the rocks and leveling the space was much easier with the tractor. It still took us a few weeks to get the project done by the time we carried and leveled all the bricks.
We added a french drain behind the wall to help move rain water further from the house and eliminate most of the erosion issues. We added a terraced layer to the steepest section to also help with erosion and stop the dirt from washing away.
We added some dirt to backfill the bricks, and we added large amounts of mulch to retain water and improve the soil. It will continue to look better every year as the plants get established and new ones are added. We added a large butterfly bush and a rose of sharon at the end furthest from the house to help it looked anchored and give it definition. Some of the plants include salvia, foxglove, blanket flowers, bee balm, sage, mums, cone flowers, various mints, juniper, creeping phlox, stone crop, coreopsis, dahlias and lavender.
(Updated 2020)