My thumb is green

When Jeff and I first looked at our house one of the things I noticed was the house was screaming (at the top of it's lungs) for curb appeal.  The structure of the house had charm, but there it was a cute house sitting on a some land.  Nothing tied the property into the house.  Of course, my thought was flower beds.  For those of you who don't know me, I'm a big lover of gardening.

I love to add flower bed and decide which border style to use to get the look I want.  We decided to use moss rock to line the beds.  I perfer a flatter cut of the stone, but we ended up with chopped stone.  Ultimately I think it was a better purchase because the stones appear more substantial and really ground the bed to the house and 2 acres around it.

I've already posted some pictures of us planning the structure of the beds by cutting an outline into the dirt.  Jeff installed a sprinkler system tying it off of the side waterhouse line.  The system was built on top of the existing dirt as the beds were going to raise the height so very little digging was necessary.

Once we had water figured out it was time to fill in with dirt.  Jeff and I bought 1 yard (~1,500 lbs) of bulk dirt and emptied into one of the beds.  It only filled it about 1/4 the way.  We then figured out that we were going to need A LOT of dirt.  So the project sat...and sat...and sat.

About 3 months later, for a house warming present, my mom and dad loaded up the back of a 4 runner with plants and said they'd help complete the project.  With the plants in the front yard dying slow death it was time to kick into high gear.

So, early on Saturday morning I laid weedblock inside of the beds and started pricing dirt.  We ended up going with bags of dirt instead of bulk to help save our backs.  It ended up being more expensive, but the time savings of not having to shovel and wheelbarrow dirt across the yard was worth it.  Josh (my live-in brother) helped me buy bags of top soil, manure, and garden soil and fill the beds.

By the next weekend we were ready to plant and add mulch.  My mom came up from Houston on Friday night and early Saturday morning we planted all the house warming gifts.  We only lost 2 plants in the two weeks it took to get them in the ground!  Not too bad.  That afternoon my dad came from the deer lease and helped us lay the mulch.

I'm thrilled with the end result and will be taking weekly pictures to document the growth of the beds.  I'm addicted to The Natural Gardener here in Austin so I'm sure you'll see new plants every few weeks.  The Natural Gardener is a huge nursery which promotes native and organic gardening. If you're in the area, check them out!