Welcome to Week 3 of the Yard Transformation Challenge, hosted by Nat at Simple Family Crazy Life
Week 1|Week 2|Week 3|Week4|Week 5 |Week 6
So happy that you came back to see where we are at the half way point of this challenge.
Lawn
I’m really not an expert on lawns. And I have to admit that Greg is really taking the lead on this. I have started to do some reading and research so hopefully by next year, I will actually be able to provide some information based on experience! In the mean time , I checked in with my Dad, who has a pretty flawless lawn, and he told me that he has always used Scotts Turf Builder so we did too! As above we used the Turf Builder, Scott’s Lawn Response 9-1-1, which is a mix of fertilizer, soil enhancers and grass seed. And also an additional bag of grass seed. And speaking of family. My Grandma used to have the MOST beautiful gardens. I always remember being a little girl at her house, and picking snapdragons to use for finger puppets. And I remember her telling me years ago the the reason her garden was so fabulous was because she used Miracle-Gro
Did you know that this fertilizer has been around for over 150 YEARS!! I just bought this one, so let’s see how my flowers do?
Fence & Pressure Washing
So after quite a bit of debate, and honestly even more paint samples. I ended up going with the Cappuccino semi transparent stain by Behr. It’s a bit more solid than I wanted. But I think that using transparent on a fence that is not new, shows a LOT of imperfections. I bought one gallon (that’s 3.78 litres for those of us in Canada 🙂 And that covered 3 panels and 2 planter boxes, I have TWENTY-TWO MORE panels to go, and that is not including the back side. So, I bought a 5 gallon bucket of stain. That was a bit more expensive than I thought it would be at about $275 Canadian dollars. Well, there’s no going back now! Here is what it looks like with some of the staining done.
Roses
The roses are doing their thing for spring. I have added in rose fertilizer I’m thinking about pruning down a few of the bushes that I left tall, or all of the blooms are going to end up way above my head! I did leave one of my climbers really high because it’s forming a natural canopy and will be really beautiful when it’s in bloom.
Trees
I went with the coiled plastic edging
for these little trees. It already looks better. To “install” it, I put it in the intended spot, and then used a turf edger
to cut into the dirt around it. Then I used a rubber mallet to pound it into the area where I had cut into the soil. Once it was in place I pulled up any grass that was inside the border – done!
Strawberry Experiment
We have this little free standing planter box in our yard, that had nothing in it. One of the ONLY areas without flowers. I assume that the previous owners probably used it for herbs or some sort of veggies, but it’s not very big. I decided to fill it with strawberries. And I decided to do a little experiment, and bought 6 different varieties, to see which ones grow the best, and also which ones we like the best. Here is what it looked like before I planted them (this piece isn’t stained yet either)
I’ll give you an update on this area over the next few weeks. Here are the variaties that I planted:
- Honeoye
- Kent
- Seascape
- Fort Laramie
- Berries galore white
- All Star
And here is the start of our strawberry patch! Angus (the cat) LOVES strawberries, so I may end up having to drag him out of here, once he figures out how to get up here.
Colour
There are a lot of perennials in the gardens, but I still want to add in some annuals for that quick pop of colour. I made my first trip to the garden centre this week, it was still too soon for some of the flowers that I wanted but and I still left with a couple of calla lillies, and another clematis, there are already a few along this fence as you can see below. I bought one called Pink Champagne I also scoped out a really cool garden ornament that I’m thinking about going back to buy. If I get it, you will see it next week!

These are some of our clematis, and that’s Greg doing his part looking after them. And yes he’s wearing his work clothes!

I love this one. H.F. Young
I also bought a couple of coleus in a beautiful shade of red. I was going to use them in planters in the front yard, but they look so nice tucked into the garden, that I think I will have to go back and buy more for the front yard.
Furniture
We have been looking at a lot of furniture. There are so many beautiful sets to choose from, it’s hard to make a decision. My one concern is that the patio is 12 x 30, which isn’t really that deep, so I don’t want to jam so much furniture on it that you can’t get around it. But having said that, I would really love to have 2 separate seating areas. At this point I’m still looking around to find something that speaks to me!
That wraps it up for this week, please come back next week!
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I am sooooo jealous of your rose collection! They are gorgeous and I can imagine how your garden looks and smells when they are in bloom!
We have decided to go with the lawn alternatives last year and have the microclover and creeping thyme instead. I also want to add some dwarf alyssum and Baby Blue Eyes this year 🙂
I was lucky enough to inherit this beautiful rose garden.This will be our first year seeing it bloom, I can’t wait. I love alyssum, I can’t get rid of our lawn, it’s Greg’s hobby 🙂
Well… we need to keep our men happy 😉 Let him play with the lawn 😊
I can’t wait to see the finished transformation. Your yard is looking great! Sometimes I wish we had a smaller yard so we could do some cool things like that. Our “lawn” is a mostly weeds!