front garden

Our cute little house has a pretty sad looking front view.  The house itself is quite filthy and the parkway and front flower beds were over grown and neglected when we bought the place.

Luckily Jon's mom is a gardening enthusiast.  She both pumps us full of advice on plants that would be happy in our garden AND actually offered to help do some work in our garden.

This week she became our 2nd official houseguest and got to work on the front bed and parkway.

She got to planting a viburnum and several other small annuals and perennials in the front bed, as well as mulching the area, and ripped out a good portion of the overgrown weedy parkway.

Feeling inspired to get to work, i finished the parkway, ripping out the rest of the weeds and neglected sod and planting the 2 flats of myrtle she brought for us to put there. 

it's got a bit of filling in to do. and i am VERY interested in putting in some nice edging to keep the dirt and plants in line - though it looks like Chicago has some things to say on parkway planting (of course).  It's always fun to see early pictures of plants, so we can compare them to what this will look like weeks and months from now when things start to grow.

This bed is all iris that actually bloomed this year.  though i think it's a bit crowded and i'll move some of them to the back yard - and hopefully put in something that will do a better job of hiding the unsightly gas line.