First, we’re deeply grateful for the outpouring of kindness and support you shared with our family yesterday. Your encouraging words and stories meant the world to us. Now, on a lighter note: let’s take a long-overdue photo tour of our yard (inspired by Katie B’s outdoor posts).
You’ve seen bits of the property in posts about our carport and driveway, the “alley,” and the magnolia out front, but there’s a lot more to show. This post is photo-heavy — I edited over 100 pictures from a couple of weekends ago, so get ready for a thorough yard tour.
Let’s start with the front yard, the area shown in our header.
The front yard is smaller than our last house’s, which I like — less grass to mow. We already have several shrub borders, groundcover areas, and a large mulched circle beneath the magnolia, so there isn’t a huge lawn to maintain. We do have long-term plans to boost curb appeal across the entire yard, but for now we’re enjoying getting to know the space and planning slowly, much like we did at our previous home.
Our goal for the front is to make the approach to the porch feel more open and welcoming. Right now, walls of boxwoods and azaleas create distinct borders around the grass, but they also interrupt sightlines and make the entry feel closed off. Ranch-style homes tend to look best with lower, varied plantings and some open space rather than tall, uniform hedges that further reduce the house’s presence.
The front door isn’t commonly used — even delivery drivers prefer the side door at the carport. The walkway is narrow and doesn’t say “come this way,” so we trimmed back some shrubs at move-in just to get furniture through. Because the path connects naturally with the paver driveway, we’d like it to feel like a usable entrance someday, even if most traffic still comes from the carport.
To open up the approach, we’re considering trimming, removing, or transplanting some of the taller shrubs and replacing them with lower-profile plantings on both sides of the walkway. That should make the entrance feel more inviting and better showcase the front porch, which we also plan to update over time.
Liriope, or “monkey grass,” is everywhere on the property. On this sloped area above the stone wall, it’s planted about ten deep and forms a dense, low-maintenance turf-like border.
That mass planting is useful because it practically maintains itself, though we’d like to add seasonal color there at some point. More confounding is the wild patch of tall grasses and leaves beside the stone wall and brick path — it’s technically our yard and it’s visible from the street.
This side yard separates us from the neighbor’s house and provides welcome breathing room. The lot is roughly the same area as our last home — nearly an acre — but it’s squarer rather than a long rectangle. That gives us more side-to-side yard but fewer dense woods at the back. The trade-off is visible “wild” spaces that we’d like to naturalize: tall grasses, wildflowers, and additional trees and shrubs to create a lush, semi-forested look over time. There’s no rush; we’ll plant fast-growing evergreens slowly to regain some privacy and the beloved wooded feeling.
The backyard still has a lot of raw, un-landscaped space. The addition to the house gives the rear a different character from the front — we love the peak — and someday we may balance the look by refreshing siding or brick, but that’s a long-term decision we’ll consider carefully.
Part of the yard used to be forested but was cleared and now serves as a leaf collection area. In the past we might have tried to seed grass everywhere, but after reading about organic lawn care we’re embracing more “wild” zones to reduce maintenance. Those areas will remain low-maintenance while we plant screening evergreens to restore some of the private, woodsy feeling we miss from our previous backyard.
We find the backyard charming even though it contains more pathways and planted beds than we’d prefer. The brick paths are nicer than the pea gravel we had previously (that was a weeding nightmare), but some round planting beds that interrupt the lawn will likely be removed to create more uninterrupted grassy space for the dog and future kids to run.
Along the path, the liriope border is low-profile compared with large shrubs, but in many spots it’s planted multiple rows deep, which narrows and closes in the walkway. We prefer softer, more organic edges, so we’ll likely remove a lot of the monkey grass and grow turf up to the brick for a cleaner, more cohesive look.
There are also many stone borders throughout the yard. Sherry finds them visually interruptive, and I don’t love trimming grass around them. In some areas they provide a clear break between lawn and wild plantings, which is useful, but in other spots — like a lone tree set in the middle of grass — they feel unnecessary. We’ll probably transplant that tree into the woodsy back section to declutter the main lawn.
All those stone edges do make mowing a bit more tedious — I use a gas mower for the back because my push mower performs best on long, straight stretches, and the back isn’t laid out that way.
Behind the carport, next to the sunroom, sits a small fenced area we jokingly call everything from “Liriope Heaven” to “Burger’s Bathroom.” It’s perfect for our dog Burger: fenced, visible from the house, and full of interesting spots to explore.
We plan to continue removing liriope here and eventually build a DIY stone patio to create more usable outdoor living space. Right now, our only entertaining area is the small patio adjacent to the sunroom, which was left by the previous owners and barely fits our furniture or grill.
The sunroom appears to have been an outdoor space long ago — you can still see the original brick steps. It’s odd those stairs weren’t removed when the room was enclosed and outfitted with outlets and a fan. I suggested adding pots on the steps, but Sherry worries it might look cluttered, so we’ll find a better solution later.
Overall, we’re falling for the outdoor spaces at this house. They aren’t perfectly “us” yet, which is part of the fun — there’s a lot of potential. As spring arrives, everything is starting to leaf out and bloom, and we’re especially in love with a grafted maple that shows two different leaf colors — a real jewel of the yard that brightens the view from our guest room window.
I wish I’d waited to publish — our azaleas started to color just yesterday — but rather than delay for another round of photos I added a few flower shots Sherry snapped so you can see the early blooms.
Now that you’ve seen these “before” photos and the weather is warming up, we can finally start tackling outdoor projects. First up: removing some liriope, deciding which stone borders to keep, and creating more usable patio spaces. Once Sherry’s allergies calm down a bit (pollen season hit us hard), the yard work will really begin.
Update: If this post was a bit confusing, this updated post includes a sketch and a video that should help clarify our plans.