Catch Up to Speed

Look at all this lawn!

Our house had been a rental for something like two decades before we bought it, and it was clear immediately that very little had been done with the yard in that amount of time: it was a gigantic yard of grass and little else. Our house is at the top of a small hill, so the chainlink fence made us feel like we were in a zoo. During our first summer, we replaced the chain link fence with a wooden fence + pergola, recycled pavers into a meandering walkway, and landscaped the front and back with native plants.

Child digging in a gardenbed with toy shovel in the backyard with overgrown grass and pathway pavers. — Kid helping with the garden bed, featuring recycled pathway pavers!

Image of our backyard, it's mostly green with a garden bed of zucchini, and there's also clover and lawn. A paved, meandering walkway cuts through the green. — Another image of the garden bed and walkway

In our first gardenbed, we dug out the grass, laid out some cardboard, and filled the ditch with mixed soil (50% compost, 50% soil) from a local garden company. That summer, we tried to grow tomatoes, zucchini, nasturtiums, Brussels sprouts, corn, and cilantro. We later learned the tomatoes were too big of a variety to try to grow during our short growing season (short because basically two months of summer). The Brussels and corn never grew, and the cilantro went to seed very quickly. Next time, we will try cherry tomatoes, and we will keep doing the zucchini because that was very successful. Nasturtiums were overzealous and even into the winter kept growing, so next time, I'll use those sparingly.

To the right of a beige house, a mom wearing a red hat uses a hole digger for a fence post — Chainlink to wood fence refresh!

Zinnias and cosmos in the fore, dried up grass lawn and half built wooden fence in the back. — As you can see, cosmos and zinnias did really well.

During our first year, we turned the chainlink fence into a wooden fence and landscaped a little flower area. Initially, I had purchased a PNW native seed mix from Freddy's, but cosmos and zinnias grew from that mix (which are definitely not native to the PNW). We are cheap, so did the fence ourselves. It turned out really well for being our first fence!

Walkway in the front of our house leading to the front door, native plants in individual pots ready to be planted in the front yard — Native Plants!

Native plants in the ground

Our front yard is on a huge slope, so not the easiest to build garden beds. We've instead decided to turn the front into a native habitat fit with multiple canopy layers to better absorb the runoff from the Pacific Northwest rainy season. The above is an outdated picture, but in the front, we now have a mulch island that houses a Grand fir, Semi-dward honeycrisp apple (not native), thimbleberry, Blue elderberry, Tall Oregon grape, Evergreen huckleberry, Hairy honeysuckle, Buckbrush, Douglas aster, Birch-leaved spirea, and Salal.

A mom in a gray flannel, a gray "Dog Dad" hat, blue jeans, and brown Keen boots watering the root base of a cilantro plant in the garden bed — Mom watering cilantro roots

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