Monday, June 2, 2008

5 tons of rocks...

Over the course of the past week, the major project in our household has been landscaping the front yard. It is so hard to keep grass alive here unless you have a sprinkler system built into the ground, which we don't. It involves going outside every couple of nights and rearranging the sprinkler system to try to keep the grass alive. We decided to get rid of some of the grass and plant xeriscape plants that are suitable to the high desert climate we live in. So along the sidewalk, my husband installed this wall, dug out the grass, and leveled the ground.

We then tilled the soil and put down weed blackout paper, and planted some plants like this Autumn Joy below.
Of course, we then couldn't decide between mulch and rocks. Last year we bought numerous and I do mean numerous bags of mulch for this center island and it already looked bad. So, we decided to go with rocks.
We called a local gravel and rock company and had 5 tons of rocks delivered Saturday morning. So this is what 5 tons of rocks looks like. I thought it would be more, but the pile on our driveway was pretty impressive. It was at least 5 feet tall and sloped down to nine feet from edge to edge. We still have a small pile left to put somewhere...
We pulled back some of the mulch in the middle and added rocks to the island. We also planted a crab apple tree on the right and a dwarf dogwood on the left, which I am praying stays alive-it didn't look to hot after sitting in a pot for a week on our back porch.
In the corner of the yard, we planted grasses and baby's breath. Here you see switch back grass, fountain grass, blue fescue, autumn joy and the really tall grass in the left corner-which I don't remember the official name of.

This final plant is Lena's Broom. It is supposed to get 5 feet tall by about 5 feet wide. It has these gorgeous yellow and orange blooms. I am excited about how much better the yard looks and even more excited that we are close to being done! Now if we can just keep everything alive for the summer. We did put a soaker hose under all those rocks, so we just have to turn the hose on and it waters all of our little baby plants. You can't even see it, which I find very cool.

3 comments:

MamaB said...

Really good looking, you have really put some time into this. Love it.

Nat said...

WOW! It looks great. I hope that I can make it that way this summer so that I can see it in person.

Amy a.k.a. dragonryder4 said...

Wow looking wonderful !! I always thought 5 tons would be a massive amount of rock but it's really not a whole bunch ! I'll have to keep that in mind when I do the walkway out to the dog kennel ! Wanted to let you know that I haven't recived an e-mail from you , me & yahoo are having issues the last few days can you shoot me off another one :)
Hugs,
Amy