LANDSCAPING
TREES
Now that the roof is completed, we're going to get some tree work done. This Magnolia tree is dead center of the front door and destroys the views of the lake across the street and of the house. It also makes it impossible to grow anything because of the shade. It's at least a couple of hundred years old and hasn't been cared for in years. We got an arborist out here and had him inspect the tree. It is healthy and ready for an extreme haircut. They will remove all of the dead branches, cut back the over weighted branches, and then shape the tree. You can see how massive it is by how tiny our 2 story house is next to it. While this is happening this giant 300 year old whopper in the backyard is getting a major haircut as well. You can see the before and after in the pics below.
Of course the photos don't do the amount of work done to all of the trees justice, but the trees now look beautiful and there is zero fear of a branch falling and damaging the roof.
Below is the before and after of the front yard. I've cleared a lot of the overgrown areas and still have a ton to do. After I get everything cleared, we will bring in a company to remove all of the pine bark. They will bring in new dirt and then they will grade the entire front yard. Then we will be ready to landscape. The Magnolia tree stays, as will the small canopy of trees on the left side of the yard, but everything else will go.
I've also tossed the "Greens Cottage" sign because it's completely falling apart. But, stay tuned. I'm going to make a new one that will look amazing!
THE FRONT YARD
My main issue with the front yard landscaping is that it completely blocked the view of this very unique house. I didn't mind the wildness, but it's not really our style. Keeping the mature trees will help in my design, but everything else must go.
One of our favorite places is Savannah GA. We are using the many Squares and parks of that beautiful city as an influence to our front yard landscaping design.
The house is west facing. That means that everything close to the house will be in shade all morning and dappled sunlight all afternoon through the magnolia tree. The canopies of the trees in the front left and under the magnolia will give the plants dappled light all day. The yard in front of the magnolia will get late afternoon sun. This lends itself well to broad leaf colorful deep greens, mondo grass, hydrangeas and cordalyns. in the shady and dappled areas. In the runner areas we will plant crotons, loriope and sod.
In order to landscape the front yard the entire thing needs to be graded. The yard slopes towards the house, there is soil buildup around the crawlspace and there is old pine bark mulch about a foot deep through out the yard. There are old stumps, gnarled rose bushes and pertruding roots that all need to go. The only way to do this is to bring in a grading company.
As you can see in the above pic, there is a brick path that we left. The path is made up of extra large antique brick from St. Augustine. We love the path and the bricks, but as you can see the previous owners parked their car on it and put huge dents in the the path. It also was neglected for so many years, it started to come up in places and fall apart.
The only way to fix this is to pull up every single brick, cut out every root and dig a trench. Then after smoothing the pathway trench and putting down underlayment sand, the bricks were meticulously put back into place. Then a border of concrete was put around the edges holding the path in place. Finally sand was applied into the gaps and the soil was pulled back into place over the concrete border.
The pathway turned out great. We were able to salvage all of these neglected antique bricks and give them a new life.
BACKYARD
Before we put in the pool, we need to remove a lot of stuff in the backyard. The entire yard needs to be graded. We are removing the giant concrete pad, pavers, all of the plant mounds and some other stuff you can't see in the pic below.
There is a limited amount of landscaping that we can do in the backyard. The pool is going to make a mess, so we are holding off landscaping most of the backyard. The one place we can landscape is around the giant camphor tree.
When grading the backyard the workers found an old pond buried beneath the Philodendron. Around that pond were large quartzite rocks. We kept these stones and placed them around the tree as a border.
You can also see the Tibouchina or "Glory Tree" we planted by the shed. That tree should get to the height of the shed and it will be covered in purple blooms.
This area around the tree gets dappled morning sun and then is mostly in the shade throughout the afternoon. We think these colorful plants and flowers will add a pop of needed color.
We added 3 tons of 1" pea gravel to the side of the house. We did this for a few reasons.
1. Drainage. When is rains the water runs down the hill created by the giant camphor tree and it ends up pooling by the side kitchen door.
2. Sunlight. There is next to zero direct sun on the side of the house, so putting in grass is impossible.
We put a commercial grade weed barrier down first and then the pea gravel. The gravel is about 3-4" deep. This area will be my potting station and cuttings garden. It's where I will get all of my plants started. I decided to keep the industrial kitchen sink and I will be using that as the potting station. More on that in a bit.
The pea gravel works great as drainage. Before the gravel, our normal 4pm Orlando summer rain was enough to flood the area.
One day after we put in the gravel, hurricane Ian hit us. We got over 15" of rain in 2 days and I'm happy to say there was zero flooding. We had some downed branches, but luckily that was all.
The grass is starting to fill in and finally tracking dirt inside is at a minimum.
We love to sit outside at night. Plus the back of the house has a ton of windows and glass doors facing the backyard. It was important to us to treat the backyard as part of the living space and lighting is an important part of that. Every light in the backyard is on a timer and is LED, which keeps the electric bill low.
