Trim It - Project

My latest home improvement project was something that I put off until I was ready to seriously take my time and do it right. When I first moved into my house it was obvious the previous owners had stopped maintaining the bushes and and plant life around the house beyond mowing the lawn.  It may not have been that long, but it was reaching the point where the bushes were no longer helping the appearance of house, but actually hurting.

Which was great when I was buying the house and looking to drive the price down, but not so much the way I want them to look now that I am living here. We'll not even go into the swingset that was dismantled during the first week because of the dryrot and that it probably needed to be removed 5 years before I moved in.

As for the bushes and plants: All of the shrubs were overgrown, most were touching the house (never a good thing), lavendar plants that had been allowed to grow and die and and grow and die over and over again. And at the corner of the house one of the best and fastest growing bushes is (was) a wild Mulberry bush that appeared to have been trimmed back at least once in the in past several years ago.

So in March I cut back the bushes to a height and width which they were more suited to be. All plant people would tell you that is way too early in the year for seasonal pruning. But I planned to do it in two stages anyway so I could more easily control the growth. So last week and this week I was finally able to complete the bush trimming and shaping process.

Including the thistled briar bushes on either side of the door, all of the weeds surrounding the house, completely edging the lawn by the driveway and both sides of the sidewalk, which actually exposed about 6 more inches of width to the sidewalk.

As of today the wild growing Mulberry bushes are now gone and mostly converted into kindling for my backyard fire-pit. And the brick edging that surrounds most of the house, which was mostly hidden when I bought the house, is now serving the decorative purpose that it was originally intended to.

The lilac bushes on the Noth and South corners of the house may be in their final days, but I want to give them another year before I think about cutting them out and replacing them. With all of the other "garbage" removed it may be possible for them to make a comeback, but I am not holding my breath.

I still need to trim back the Dog Rose bushes that are about seven feet tall now, but I want to wait until after they flower to actually trim them back. They serve as a great natural barrier wall between my house and the neighbor behind me the way they are, so I do not want to take their height down too much.

All I need to do now is apply a stump kill to the rouge bush stumps, clean up the area a bit around house, and add a few more bags of river stones around the house. Hopefully next year this will end up being less of a deal than it was this year.