So, there have been some pretty big changes going on around our house lately. One big alteration? The paint color. Yay! At the end of May our house was repainted from the brownish color I was not so fond of to a beautiful blue-ish green. LOVE it. But now that the outside of our house had a makeover, it was time to talk landscaping. Because let’s be honest: it was a bit of a mess.
The previous owners of our home did a great job of keeping up the lawn and some of the other plants in the front of the house, but there was a LOT to be desired when it came to two spots in particular. There was a HUGE vine plant/bush thing on the side of the house, and a half moon shaped area near the walkway to the front door was looking a mess. Thankfully, we managed to spruce it up a bit.
I don’t know about you, but I am such a fan of color. The front of our house had zero flowers on it and I thought it was such a shame. I knew right from the start there was a particular bush/plant/whatever you want to call it that I absolutely HAD to have: bougainvillea.
Our next door neighbor has a coral colored one that has grown to crazy proportions/grown over the fence. The beautiful clusters of flowers are so bright and happy. The farmer’s market we visit on the weekends just so happens to have a nursery vendor who always has beautiful baby bougainvilleas…so we bought three of them to replace the horrible vine/bush abomination on the side of our house.
I absolutely could not resist the hot pink and fuchsia varieties. We purchased a few new fan trellises (in white, so they blend in against our white fence) and guided the vines through them. It makes me smile to see those pretty flowers every day!
As for the front walkway? That was a bit more work to figure out. That particular area doesn’t get enough sun for bougainvillea (single tear…), so we had to rethink our options. In a perfect world, I’d have bougainvillea growing everywhere. So, Justin and I scoured our local home stores and nurseries to find some plants that spoke to us. As soon as I laid eyes on these Aloha Lillies, I was in love. They have such a unique shape, and their eggplant purple color looks awesome as a pop against our new blue exterior.
We knew we needed a few more plants aside from the Aloha Lillies, so we searched for another option to arrange around the outside of the flower bed. We settled on these plants with light lavender and orange flowers. Apparently they are butterfly attractors…and they smell like mint! Bringing them home with us in the car was a nice treat – the entire interior smelled heavenly!
I wish I had a photo of what the flower bed looked like before Justin got his hands on it. He was so eager to remove what was existing that he forgot to let me take the full “before” photo. Not only were these strange grass plants hanging around in the flower bed, but there was also some sort of small tree with red berries that was taking up residence. Sorry tree – you had to go. After pulling up all of the extra plants from the bed, it was time to arrange our new finds!
We placed the Aloha Lillies in the back, and lined the outside edge of the bed with the minty plants (we read that they spread out over time, so we’re hoping to see them grow together and form a small hedge-like area eventually. We’ll see.
…and after digging holes, planting the flowers, and adding some mulch to finish it off, that was about it for now! We were happy to tackle a project that added a bit of beauty to the front of our house. Now…let’s hope we manage to keep the flowers alive and thriving! Gulp…
You might want to space out those bougainvillea…..they grow HUGE very fast and that’s not a lot of room to grow…. I have a few against different parts of my fence and they have completely taken over 🙂
Haha, the pictures with them in front of our house are deceiving – they were sitting in their planters before we moved them to the side of the house where they are now in the ground with large fan trellises to support them! I probably shouldn’t have been so lazy and moved them out of the way for the picture – it definitely looks like they’re planted there, oops. Fortunately, we are familiar with how fast and large they grow, which is why I wanted to add them to our yard…apparently I’m an impatient person…they’ve already doubled in size since we planted them a few weeks ago! I’ll have to take some new pictures to document their growth!