Curb Appeal

So up until recently I've been working mostly on my backyard and not very much on the front.  But it's the front yard that everyone else actually sees, so I decided to jump on adding some curb appeal during my week off.  One area that has always bugged me is the lawn to the West of my driveway as it is 90% weeds and 10% dead grass (not attractive) so I decided to take at least one step towards fixing that.  My mailbox area was of the same story, so I figured I could just dig it all up and replace the weeds with a flower garden to make it look a lot better, and I wouldn't have to mow that pointless little area (BONUS!).

I wish I had taken a before picture, but just know that it looked exactly like the area directly above it in most of these pictures, plus a baby tree growing in front of my mailbox.

At first I dug up all the weeds and just tilled the Earth and was planning on leaving it like that for the sake of simplicity.

Wasn't going to cut it

But after sleeping on it I realized that just a few more steps would mean a lot less headaches (weeds) in the future, so it was worth it to put in the extra effort.  I dug up several inches of dirt and roots from my neighbor's tree.  Here you can see the edger I put into the ground to prevent grass and weeds from creeping into the new flower bed.

The next step is a little weird and caught the attention of my mailwoman, but I've tried it in my backyard and it works very well.  Newspapers when wet and covered work just as well as landscaping fabric at blocking existing weeds or grass from growing out of any leftover roots.  AND newspapers will eventually decompose into the earth.  This won't prevent me from ever having weeds, but if I left any grassroots or weed roots in there they won't be growing back.

After that I got some free compost from the landfill which you can read more about here.  I filled my entire truck and it was barely enough!

After throwing that in and making sure the middle was slightly raised from the edges to ensure proper drainage, I covered it with mulch before deciding what to plant in it.

Even without plants the curb appeal is already much better!!