Evolution of my garden

Last year was the starter year for my gardening. Prior to that I had always lived in apartments with no yard, but our current house has a front garden and a back garden. By the time we moved in they were both in daunting condition, so I started with the front garden which has some nice legacy plants and is pretty contained (9x9).

When we bought the house, the front garden looked like this:

The previous owner died in 2003 and since that time the house was owned by her nieces who both live in LA. The neighbors tell me that she had been a really avid gardener who would spend hours in her garden. After she died the garden declined, but there are some nice legacy plants there: a very healthy and established Daphne plant, some aging roses, lots of cala lilies and chasmanthe.

After we bought the house we removed the japanese maple tree as it blocked the front of the house, and the camilia bushes because they were very old. There was a period of renovation, and by the time we moved in the front garden looked like this:

In February of last year, I decided to tackle the garden. I initially visited Home Depot and bought bulbs, cheap stepping stones, and some garden edgers. They aren't the classiest items and they are definitely not real stone, but the price was right and they were easily accessible. I installed everything and planted some flowers that I got at Flowercraft, and this is what my baby garden looked like...

From the top of our front stairs:

From the bottom of our front stairs:

From the other side of the yard:

From outside the front gate:

I planted a lot of little plants that I thought were nice when I was at the garden center, and some of them were not well suited to the summer conditions of our yard. The yard retains water nicely when it is wet, but becomes very dry in the summer. As soon as it started to get warm, most of the plants died (my life is also too hectic for routine watering), which was a bit discouraging so I stopped working in the garden as much.

This year, on the first nice weekend I decided to tackle the disaster that was our front yard. I weeded half the yard, took out some of the dead plants, trimmed back the others and created a little border in front of my daphnes and foxgloves. Then it rained for 2 weeks and on the next nice weekend I weeded the rest of the yard. I filled up an entire compost bin with weeds!

Here is what my mature, weeded garden looks like:

Even my little dog thinks it's a more appealing place to hang out:

Now all we just need to tackle the backyard (yes, that is our backyard down there covered in weeds):