Landscaping: Backyard

I love looking at Pinterest for ideas on what to do in my house, landscaping ideas, hardscaping ideas, but the problem is that the majority of the pictures would either take a lot of money to replicated or it would need a lot of space and a million dollars to replicate. I don't have any of that.

It has really taken me a while to decide what I wanted to do with the backyard. I knew I wanted to kind of section it up like rooms so that each place had it's own function. I knew I wanted to have edibles, but I also wanted it to be pretty. I also wanted something that would encourage the wildlife to come to my backyard.

This bottom picture was the first part that I did and it kind of happened by mistake. I bought the birdbath for the hardscape in the backyard, but once it was built I figured out that I didn't want the bird bath out there. I decided to make it the focal point of this small space in the backyard.

There are boxwoods in the back and in the front with lavender in the middle. The area right in front of the bird bath is mondo grass, a type of ground cover which will eventually ill in that little space. I'm waiting for the boxwoods to grow a bit more before a trim them into a hedge.

I hated looking at my AC so I found these panels at Lowe's and planted Iris plants at the edges.

This is soooooo much better.

This is my sitting area across from the AC unit. I'm growing honeysuckle up the fence and I decided to be creative and use fishing line and command hooks for it to grow up. The honey suckle is still trying to get bigger, but it's not a very aggressive vine. That's great for when it gets to be where I want it, but I'm impatiently waiting for it to begin to grow a little faster!

There are rosemary bushes on each side but they are hard to see because they are so small. At the far end is a Banana Shrub-- omg! It smells so good when it's in bloom. I planted it next to the patio in hopes that the smell will blow over to the sitting areas over there.

This is part of my vegetable garden, but it's mixed in with some shrubs. It's a cantaloup plant and it's flowering like crazy. I'm kind of excited to see what happens with it.! I'm trying to trellis it so I have more room to grow more. I think a vertical garden is the best kind if you can do it. Mine looks less vertical and more horizontal though. Yikes!

I've been getting a lot of Monarch butterflies in my yard. This guy just happened to land next to me while I was outside taking pictures.

Here are my backyard crape myrtle and my red knockout rose bush. I love the knockout roses because I just have to prune them back every now and then and they bloom really well!

I just love gardenias. It's one of my favorite plants and it always makes me so sad that they only bloom for such a short period of time. And not to mention those beautiful white flowers turn brown so quickly. I just had to take a picture of this perfect gardenia flower. Isn't it beautiful?

Here is my hardscape project that I did a couple of months ago. I really wanted something that would attract butterflies so everything in this garden was marked for butterflies. Much to my delight, I have made friends with a hummingbird who comes around nearly every day and zooms around my garden.

I also have a dwarf lemon tree in the raised garden. It has quite a bit of green fruit and I'm waiting for the color to change!!

Lantana is one of the most popular flowers for butterfly gardens. I accidentally picked out some pinks because I originally wanted to stick with the red and yellow, but I'm glad I got the pink one too! It adds a little something, don't you think?