Emily McCall Photography

That’s what Ben and I have on our hands now that our two ridiculous dogs have destroyed every last shred of landscaping that existed in our back yard when we moved into our house in March.  We no longer have plants, shrubs, or even grass back there!  It’s now pretty much nothing but dirt and gravel; it looks a bit like a third-world country.

Now, anyone who knows me will tell you that I don’t have much of a green thumb; I’m actually more of the black thumb variety.  And while I flatter myself that I did a pretty decent job of decorating the interior of our house, I am absolutely clueless when it comes to designing a landscape.  I have no idea what grows in Texas soil, what should be planted in sun, what should be planted in shade, what needs lots of watering and what doesn’t, what will stand up to two blundering sheepdogs . . .

So, to save myself the trial-and-error ordeal, we hired a landscape designer to come in and tell us what to do.  And boy, did he!  Daniel from Colorful Impressions gave us a killer design for both the front and back of our house, keeping our lifestyle and budget in mind.  Now all we have to do is make it happen!  Our plan is to do things in phases, starting with the back yard — which is in the most dire need of help!  So we got started last weekend by doing some planting in the corner of our back yard around our giant pecan tree.  Here’s a before shot:

Ick, right?!  It was an ugly mess.  But after a very productive trip to the North Haven Gardens nursery and a long, hard weekend of tilling, digging, planting, and watering, it now looks like this:

Much better, right?!  For those of you interested in this sort of thing, I’ll tell you that we planted yaupon holly, oak leaf hydrangea, spring bouquet viburnum, and — my favorite — an oshio beni Japanese maple that I’ve named Jasper.  We also planted lots and lots of little vinca plants, which will hopefully grow into some nice ground cover.  The vinca is camouflauged in these shots by the thousands of pecan tree leaves that are falling on it, but you can see it (and the viburnum bushes) a little better in this shot:

The best news of all is that everything we planted is still alive after one week!  That’s a pretty big accomplishment for us — both the dogs and we managed to keep from destroying it!  We’re so high on our success that we’re already looking ahead to the next project: laying a flagstone patio off of our garage . . .

Yikes.  Please pray for us! 

(And bonus points to you if you can spot all the dog toys in this shot — I see three!)