Outdoor Transformation: Backyard

The backyard has been my latest project to date. While Brad was gone for a couple weeks, I re-vamped the backyard to my liking! I actually surprised Brad with all the new additions and thankfully he loved it! I did not take pictures of the backyard before hand, but I googled the house and got pictures that way. Kinda creepy the internet has pictures of your house that you yourself don't even possess!

Here's what the backyard looked like up to a month ago:

From these pictures you can see that the only tree or only plant for that matter was the pin oak. With living in Florida and the opportunity to grow citrus and fruit trees easily, it was a no brainer that was what I wanted! First tree to plant: meyer lemon. I have always wanted my very own meyer lemon tree to enjoy! Meyer lemons are the best lemons to cook with because of their taste. They aren't as sour as a normal lemon and have a hint of orange to them. They are also hard to find at the grocery or farmer's market. Best of all, they produce fruit all year long and are disease resistant! 

Meyer Lemon Tree

 Next plant: Blueberry bushes. I absolutely love blueberries!! We have two blueberry bushes in Corinth and every year I look forward to harvesting them. So why not have our own blueberry bushes? We planted two of them.

 Next step: Cover the bases of the plants. I love the look of stone (obviously from the front yard) and think it makes things stand out in a classy way. Not to mention, I have become friends with the men at EarthWorks and like to support their business. I measured how large I wanted the circle to be around the plants and went from there. For the blueberry bushes, I only did one layer of the rocks since they are still small and close to the ground. For the meyer lemon, I did a three layer of rock.

 Blueberries

Now it was time to take care of the right side of the yard. I wanted a tree that would grow to be big to balance out the size of the pin oak. Granted, the tree I chose still has a LONG way to go, but eventually it should grow to 15 feet or so. I chose a Flordaking Prince peach tree. A fresh juicy peach is by far my favorite fruit. Therefore, why not plant one! Brad calls it a stick in the ground, but it'll grow, just wait.

Lastly, I had to encircle the large Pin Oak. I have always envisioned of making the circle large enough to where I could plant flowers around the base. This way color would be added to the backyard that could be changed out with the seasons. The circle for the Pin Oak had to be 6 feet with a circumference of 19 and atleast 3 layers of rock. Since the rock I used was not very thick, it took lots and lots of pieces to make up the circle. 800 pounds to be exact! I made the mistake of laying the rock first without encircling the tree with composite landscaping paver. That made me re-do the rock more times than needed, but I did get it exactly the way I wanted it. After I laid the paver and then the rocks against it, it took 6 cubic feet of garden soil and 2 cubic feet of mulch. Finally, I was done!

 

I will add the flowers whenever Spring rolls around. Dutchess and Wellsley think its their new playground that I built for them for now.

Picture of the whole yard:

I cannot wait until all my fruit trees produce and I get to reap the benefits of my labor! For Christmas, my mom got me a canning and preserving kit. I will be putting it to good use this year...hopefully!!