Stump tuggin'

We continued the front garden project that we started yesterday, and we've made some great progress!

First, we finished building the second tier of the side garden. We dug out some of the slope and stacked two rows of stone pavers to create a retaining wall. Then we capped them off with a row of edgers.



I'm really happy with how this wall turned out! (I picture planting some phlox or something similar so that the flowers drape and pour over the wall.)

As often happens around here, our plans then took a little detour and instead of planting and mulching, we decided to rip out all of the dead stumps and dying bushes from the front of the porch.

The previous owners left behind a few unsightly stumps in the front yard.



Not pretty.

After looking at them for the last 10 months, we decided it was definitely time for them to go.



Luckily, we had a pickup truck, chain, and the help of our bff Josh. It was time to tug out some stumps!



After wrapping the chain around the stump, all it took was backing up the truck and the stumps came up pretty easily.



After the old stumps were out, we turned our attention to the half-dead, awkwardly placed evergreen and rhododendron bushes.



We figured while we were tuggin' stumps, we might as well give everything the heave-ho. Those two bushes came out pretty easily, and the change was already huge.



We were left with quite a mess, though. The back of the bushes had apparently been a dumping ground for random garbage. We found everything from an old diaper (seriously, one of the grossest things everrr) to a 3-foot long iron spike.



Some raking was all it took to get the area back in shape. After we had it cleaned up, we got out some twine and stretched it across to get a straight line.



Once we had the twine set to use as a guide, we started laying in the edger stones along the perimeter of the new garden bed.



We then implemented the very scientific method of standing on the stones to level them.



This was followed by the equally technical process of hitting the stones with a hammer to get them in line.



We ran out of edgers just before we could complete the border, but we laid out what we had leftover to get an idea of the end result.


After just a few hours of work today, the change to the front of the house was already pretty tremendous!



And because you know I can't live without a good before and after, let's take a look at where we're at now...

Before:


And after!!:


I'll be sure to keep ya'll updated when we get to planting. Anyone have recommendations for low-maintenance plants that do well in part sun/shade??