As they say on HGTV, it's all about Curb Appeal!

One of my favorite shows is Curb Appeal. It's this fantastic 30 minutes of television (well, not really 30 when you count the commercials!), anyways on the show a homeowner submits their home for a face lit of sorts, where a landscape designer will come out and put together a plan to update the outside of the house. Usually this includes a new coat of paint, possibly new windows to be more specific to the time period when the home was built, and almost always new landscaping for the front of the house. This brings me to my latest project going on ... working on the curb appeal for my 1960's Cape Cod house!


First up is the front landscaping, or lack there of in my case! When I bought my house it was framed with some old school bushes, that in my mind, had to go. With the help and muscles of JJ, this was a taken care of within the first few months of moving in. Below is a picture the front of the house after the bushes were removed.
This Spring I decided it was time to get a plan together to add some shrubs & flowers to make the walk up to the home more welcoming. I enlisted the help of a "landscape guru" I work with and also got some get advice from a local garden shop to get the plan moving. I spray painted the layout I wanted and edged the lawn to form the area where the front flower beds will be added:

After the grass died off, it was time for the heavy duty tools. And with heavy duty machinery, comes the help of JJ and his muscles!! We borrowed a tiller and used it to break up the dirt and pull out the old clumps of dead grass. Going on the advice of the "guru", we added some Peat Moss to the soil to get it ready for the new plants. From that point it went pretty fast, I picked out the foundation shrubs I wanted to use....Green Mountain Boxwoods & Rose Glow Barberries. Added some small mounding grass called Liriope and used different annuals like Impatiens and Zinnias to add some color.

After the planting was done, I used some brown small pine bark mulch to finish up the beds for this season. I think I may add some more perennials over time, but this is a great start for now. Overall, I'm really happy with the plants I've chosen and hope that my research pays off to make sure they are planted in the correct amount of sun/shade.

Next up on the Curb Appeal...painting the house!

Got any color suggestions?!?!