Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Greening Up the Yard

It's been difficult to have 3 kids, a nice summer and not be able to play in the yard.... We've grown tired of the dirt yard- although I will say that not having to worry about watering, mowing and maintenance this month has made me jokingly want to consider astro-turf.

Last week and the beginning of this week, the folks at CurbSide Landscape finished the final grading, Buck's Concrete poured the back sidewalk slabs and then CurbSide seeded the lawn. Before seeding, the entire yard was covered with a couple of inches of compost. We opted for hydroseeding the lawn, which a method where a slurry of water, seed and fiber mulch are sprayed on the lawn with a hose. With proper watering, grass should be growing in a week, with mowable lawn in 3-4 weeks.

The slurry has a green tint- and it made quite a mess around the base of the house.....
The front yard is planted with a traditional residential grass, such as Kentucky Blue Grass. For the back yard, we went with an "eco grass". This is a low-mow, low-water, low-maintenance turf. It may take a bit longer to establish the back yard, but we're willing to give it a try. It's amazing how much water is needed to have a lush, green yard. Given our large yard, we were looking for an alternative that will save us time and limit water use.
On Tuesday, after the yard was seeded, we received a huge downpour of rain. Unfortunately, the rain barrels and some of the downspouts weren't in place, so we may have to touch up some of the hydroseeded areas.

We're treating our yard as a work in progress that will continue to evolve over the years. With our limited budget for landscaping, this is the only option. Matthew Fair Jones, our landscape architect, helped conceptualize the plan and master plan ideas. They are simple for now. I want to make sure I understand which areas of the yard get sunlight at various times of the day and how we want to ultimately use our yard. Prior to the seeding, I did plant a small rock garden utilizing the rocks that were in our yard, around the River Birch tree by the patio.
This weekend we will plant the rain garden plants into the areas that were installed by CurbSide. More on that later....

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