Front Ditch Transformation
Early 2023, we gave our front yard drainage ditch a face lift. After the initial redo the first summer we were in our house in 2019, the weeds had taken over. The first time around I didn’t put weed paper down and the chip drop I had received had added some plants, trees, and weeds in with the chips. What this left me with a few years later was a huge mess of plants, weeds, and small trees all growing together.
So early last spring I started the work of weeding it, moving the grass line back, removing a laurel stump (really hate laurel) and added lawn edging. The early stages of this project were done in nice mid 70’s and sunny weather but by the end it was 80+ and tough to finish! Yard projects always end up being multi-step, taking much longer than I originally think, and end up being more expensive than I plan for as well.
So first I cut the lawn back to the straight edge because we wanted a defined line for the grass and then we added the edging. We weeded the entire ditch and planted the new plants/transplants. I dug up and moved, pruned, and added a bunch of plants to this ditch after the initial weeding. I added hydrangeas, rosemary, lavender, coneflowers, sedum, and some variegated boxwoods. I bought 3 small white variegated boxwoods and then I took two clippings from a gold edged plant I have in the backyard and added them. My idea with adding all of the plants was the more plants and the more space those plants take up, the less weeds can/will grow in those spaces. Time will tell wether that works out the way I think it will or not!
Here are some of the flowers I grew in the front beds! Adding color was one of my biggest inspiration for the ditch.
Then we put in the weed paper immediately and within 24 hours put the bark on it. The immediacy of putting bark on is especially important when the sun is out because the longer it’s exposed to the sun, the weaker it becomes. Laying weed paper around all of the spikey plants was super annoying and painful. I had all sorts of little cuts on my hands afterwards. At first I put all of the big rocks back at the bottom of the ditch but then decided I never wanted to weed around them again and just moved them to a different part of the yard and decided to bark this whole area. Which of course meant I had to clear the area where the rocks were going. Because again one project always leads to the next, I didn’t have time for a full weed so I put cardboard down to smother the weeds, followed by weed paper, and then the rocks. This was the first time using cardboard so we’ll see how long it lasts but I needed a quick fix with this one.
Calvin loves to dig so he absolutely enjoyed helping me dig out the grass for the edging and shovel and spread the bark. It was super fun to have him out there with me and for the first time he was actually helping a lot! Halle made a few appearances as well. They both love helping scoop the bark out of Grandpa’s trailer and use their wheelbarrow he got them a couple of years ago.
After the long ditch I moved to the other side of the driveway to the small ditch. The dirt on this side is super dry and crusty because it gets constantly baked by the sun. There was an old tree stump from a tree we had cut down a few years ago that I dug out. Then I separated some of big green plants and moved them around the ditch to fill in spots where other plants had died. This side is much smaller but I still need to put more bark on it this spring because I did a skim coat and then ran out and of course never got around to doing it again.
Let me know what you think of this transformation. As always feel free to comment any questions you might have, or if you have any other ideas of plants I should add to this area, I’m all ears!
