Sprucing Up the Garden Beds

When we first moved into this joint last November, the flower beds were pretty shot.  There were weeds everywhere, the bushes needed to be trimmed, the garden surrounding the walkway to the front door contained dead shrubbery, and all of the garden beds looked like they hadn't been mulched in years.  Needless to say, they needed some serious TLC.
I am not one who is particularly garden savvy.  Most people who know me, know that I have quite the black thumb.  Despite my black thumb, I HAD to do something with these garden beds because they were driving me loco and our curb appeal was zero to none.
In April, Eric and I planted some bulbs in hopes that we'd see some of them come up this year.  His mom had given us a whole bag full of "Naked Ladies" (Note: if you look these flowers up on Google, make sure you type in 'Flowers' behind the name.....I wasn't thinking the first time I typed it in and my search results were a little vulgar..haha!) that she had dug up from her garden.  We also bought some Calla Lilies and Dahlia Duets from the store.  Here is our dog Buckeye showcasing our flower packets:

Is he cute or what? :) We decided to save the seed packets for a later time/year.  We knew that we'd have enough bulbs to cover the amount of garden bed space we have in the front yard.  We placed the "Naked Ladies" and the Calla Lilies in the garden bed next to the walkway to the front door.  The Dahlia Duets were placed on the other side of our garage in the bed there.  Here's us hard at work in the garden beds back in April.

After de-weeding the gardens and placing the bulbs where we wanted them, the beds looked like this:

I should mention that we had some Daffodils unexpectedly pop up.  We are discovering that there have been so many plants planted in these gardens that whoever planted the second round of them didn't realize that they were planting some of the plants on top of other older ones.  We've since had to pull out some flowers that were entangled in shrubs.  After the Daffodils bloomed, we cut them way back so that they'd come up next year.  The grassy patches you see in our garden beds are some type of small purple flower that bloomed in early Spring.  We never quite figured out what they were, but we cut them back as well.  I can foresee us getting rid of them because they just aren't pretty.

We waited and waited for our flowers to bloom, but nothing happened.  Disappointment came over us, but after much rain and sunshine, we FINALLY saw some results!  All three of the Calla Lilies that we had planted came up, but only one has bloomed/opened up so far.

We also have a rose bush on the side of our house that we cut back some in April and it has now bloomed (we aren't sure what the small purple flowers underneath of it are, but they sure are pretty next to the bright pink from the rose bush!).

Although we were happy that these flowers had bloomed, our front garden beds still looked pretty dead.  We had one Calla Lily come up and then some purple flowers came up behind it, but that was it.  Bummer.  So this past weekend Eric and I decided that if the flowers we planted weren't going to come up, that we would cheat and get flowers from Lowe's that already looked beautiful.  We ended up getting a 6-pack of Begonias, a 6-pack of Petunias, one 3-Qt. Petunia, two 2.5-Qt. Petunias, and four bags of Premium Black Mulch. We planted a mixture of Begonias and Petunias in the garden bed next to the front walk, which brightened up the front of the house some and made it feel more welcoming. 

Next, we planted the bigger pots of Petunias in the garden bed on the other side of the garage.  Two of the pots contained flowers that were red and white, so to accent them, we planted plain white Petunias and red Begonias around them.

The last step was to mulch around all of the plants. Planting and mulching the beds took us about an hour and a half, but it was SO worth it to see how much it livened up our yard.  Here is a before and after of our house from a street view.

We love looking at that second picture.  It is like a breath of fresh air.  We still have A LOT of work to do to the outside of our house, but we love that the colorful flowers make it seem like people live here that care about the appearance of their house.  One definite perk of owning a house is being able to make it your own.  You can tell by looking at a house what type of people live in that house.  For us, we hope that our house says that we are enthusiastic and willing to bring life back into a 20 year old house.

This weekend we plan to work on some house projects that need to be completed before we have guests at the end of the month.  It is my intention to not blog on weekends, as that is the time Eric and I spend doing things around the house.  I hope to share some of these projects with you next week. :)

What are you getting into this weekend?  Do your garden beds need to be spruced up?  How do you make your home feel inviting to others? We'd love to hear your answers! :)