Landscaping: Raised Flowerbed

This weekend we decided it was time to take care of the flowerbed that has been in much need of care.

The one side closest to the sidewalk has a large planting of Mums that bloom in the fall, which we want to leave as is. They are just starting to pop up now. The rest of the mess is juniper, which has claimed every available space. What a mess... From this picture the juniper looks more like grass, but not as pretty.

Considering Holly is nearing the end of her pregnancy, she is by default the Foreman. Slavedriver would be a better phrasing... Only kidding! She has some excellent ideas of what we can do with this space, so I'm grateful for all the help she gives. She even got me water... Now that's Love!

Ok, enough joking... So I started pulling up the juniper to see where everything was rooted. WOW!!! These things were everywhere! I was able to use a saw to cut everything from the root system, but still have a number of stumps to get out of there. I'll take care of that soon enough.

It took me a couple of hours to completely remove the juniper from the bed. At the end I was tired and swetty and felt like I had just won a battle with a great beast. The corpse of which was now lying piled up in the lower steps leading to the porch.

Dragging the mess across the driveway reminded me of the scene in Independance Day with Will Smith dragging the Alien across the desert, Dreadlocks dragging and everything.
The juniper got a few last scratches in as it found it's final resting place, but it felt good to take care of something myself in the new house.

The next day was Easter. We did all of the fun things you normally do on Easter.

We decided to plant a number of Hyacynth's, Daffodils and Tulips in our newly cleared bed. I had to do a little more removing of stumps and roots to make this happen, but in no time the flowers were planted and smelling as sweet as ever.

Our next step is to replaced the top railroad ties that are damaged. We will then get a weeping cherry tree to place in the center of this bed. A Holly bush will be planted closer to the latice work closest to the house. Of course we will use mulch to make it all look nice again. I'll show all of that after we get it all put together.

There's just something about the smell of Spring flowers that makes things just feel better...

Enjoy the pictures.
(Disclaimer: the juniper mentioned in this post was harmed during this process. This was unavoidable...)