Earlier this week we were called to cleanup a flowerbed that had been neglected. The grass was taking over and the trees that were there had outgrown the spot they were intended for. When I met with the client she had no idea what to do and I offered a complete over haul. Let's remove the unwanted vegetation in beds, unwanted trees and shrubs and also replace the existing edging.
The first step was to rip everything out of the flowerbeds and prepare the beds for mulch. When doing this you'll want to get as much of the roots as possible. We installed new edging and then added the landscape fabric. You'll want to use a landscape fabric as a weed barrier vs plastic because plastic is nonporous and can create puddles. Puddles are very bad because they create a breeding area for mosquitos.
Once your satisfied with the beds and have leveled the beds so there are no dips or hills its time for a weed barrier. Although not 100% effective it does help significantly in unwanted growth of weeds.
Once you have covered the flowerbeds with the landscape fabric its time for mulch. At this point you could also add plants prior to the mulch but the client was still undecided on which plants she wanted so we moved forward with the mulch.
Now we have clean beds and are ready for plants. I randomly placed rocks that we found in beds just to break up the monotony of the beds prior to plant installation, which could be a couple weeks.
We presented a plan and an estimate.
A few of the things we concentrated on was to focus on low maintenance, also we didn't want to hide the house with plants but still wanted curb appeal and we wanted to keep foliage year round. In the plan we also focused on not blocking the view from inside the house once the plants have reached full maturity so we chose plants that were dwarf in variety. Once we received the green light we got to work
The finished beds
