Before and After

The garden has gone through a lot of changes in the past year.

It's nice to look back from time to time

to see where you've been.

We added curves to the backyard when we replaced the sod.

 

Then I moved the birdbath to a more covered area

where the saltbush is growing.

You may also notice that two neighbors

have put up a fence.

We enjoy the privacy!

You can see the lemon tree in the left-hand corner here.

A lone jasmine is surrounded by pine straw mulch

Not much else going on.

I've added a few things...

I replanted the saltbush from the front yard.

It keeps popping up.

It adds a nice screen from the neighbors

and the birds love it.

A few lantana and some sunflowers dot the landscape.

It's filled in well.

I am now adding only natives and Florida-friendly plants.

I won't have to scramble this winter to cover things

because they are well-suited to our climate.

The east side yard houses our A/C unit.

This sweet potato vine is used to hide it from the street,

which is required by our HOA.

The rosemary is one hearty plant.

The ligustrum's not doing so well here.

I took out the ligustrum

and let the sweet potato vine go!

Along the pathway, I added cosmos, thryallis,

more sweet potato vine on a teepee

and another ligustrum tree.

I'm still tweaking this side of the house,

as I'm not quite feelin' it,

so I don't have an after shot.

The butterfly garden has been through some changes

over the past few seasons.

It started out as our veggie garden.

We moved it because our neighbors on that side

have their lawn sprayed.

We grow organically.

The rattleboxes now tower over the little raised bed.

They will die back in winter.

I recently added amendments to this bed

to ready it for planting.

One lone native milkweed now rests here.

The west side of the house was pretty barren.

The sod looks terrible.

One of our neighbors had given us these evergreens.

One of our mystery plants and some lantana fills it in now.

It's so nice looking out the bedroom window

and seeing blooms there.

It's all a work in progress.

Wonder what it'll look like next year?

Have a great gardening day y'all!

Befores and afters

This is the same area about 2 months apart. Before we put in the beds, it was all grass (well, mostly weeds). I have transplanted things from the front yard or started from seed. I love the new curves, and the pine straw to me just screams "Florida". Being on a strict budget, I am filling in as I can.
 I'm making good use of the "free" seeds I got from the America the Beautiful project. I get a little thrill looking through the box where I've sorted the seeds according to planting season. Fall will soon be here, so I can prepare my beds now to get the best performance from the new additions. Seeds are such amazing creatures.

 This is a volunteer lantana that I transplanted from the front yard. Unfortunately, it wasn't lookin' too good for a while. I checked on it today, and wouldn't you know it? 
It's comin' back big time! Gotta love lantana. 
Freezes, drought, heat, it takes it all and keeps on growin'!

Here's a golden beauty, one of the few seedlings I actually bought at the store to plant.

 

Here's the pathway we put in that leads to the backyard. 

We used a recycled landscape fabric we bought at the store, thinking it would make the maintenance of the path pretty easy. 

Oh, how wrong we were! The cardboard lasagne method works so much better! Needless to say, this weekend I'll be pulling all the mulch up, putting down cardboard, covering it back up with mulch and adding the cement stones I got from a nice lady on Craig's list a couple of weeks ago. It's nice to have the walkway though. 

Gives the garden added movement and interest.

So far, I'm pretty happy with what we've done this year. 
I do my best to work around the fact that we have almost no shade in our yard. And the privacy issue is another matter. 
Ah well, no room in the budget for a fence! We make do with what God gives us and we are thankful. 
No doubt!