It’s been two years now since we built our new home. As anybody who has ever built a custom home from scratch knows – it’s a LOT of decision making, and a lot of work. So finally finishing it off and moving in was a real treat. I’ve posted several tours of the interior of our home here, here, and here. And I’ll be participating in another fun blog hop tour in the fall where I’ll show you how I warm things up for the cool days ahead. But today I mostly want to talk about enjoying the OUTSIDE of your home by creating beautiful outside spaces.We made sure to include several different spots where we can enjoy the outdoors. One is the porch right off the front door. Because our house is on a hill, we have a beautiful view of the valley in front of us, including mountains, some homes, and horses grazing. It’s a treat to sit outside and soak it all in. You can create a similar relaxing spot on your own porch by assembling a few comfy chairs, pillows, and maybe adding a plant or two to liven things up.
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This little porch is off the front of the house, but because we’re on a hill, and because we have some tree cover, it feels like a cozy, private spot to take in the view.
This porch is pretty small – basically just room for a couple of chairs. Make sure you add some pillows to make your outdoor spaces feel as comfortable and cozy as your indoor rooms. A lightweight throw will help keep the chill off as nights get cooler.
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I think it was a little bit of a shock to us to realize what a big job was still ahead of us once the house was completed and we were moved in. We still had that big, hilly plot of land to deal with. We’re not landscapers, by any stretch of the imagination, but we did have some idea of how we wanted to use our one acre of paradise. So we hired an excellent landscaper, chatted about our ideas, and let him do his work – and he did a fabulous job. Because we live on a hill, there was quite a bit of rock work to do in the way of retaining walls and steps to get to the house. These stairs lead from the driveway to our front door. We made sure that the landscaper incorporated some of the plants we knew we wanted into our landscaping. We have flowering trees, some quaking aspen, some pine trees, and lots and lots of shrubs, some of them flowering, and some perennials.
One problem that we had (and still have) to deal with is the constant appearance of deer in our yard. Our landscaper warned us about staying away from “deer candy”, as he called it, but I still wanted to include some of my favorites. Hydrangeas, peonies, daisies, lilacs, and climbing roses, were definitely on my list. The landscaper also included black-eyed susans, spirea, ice plant and lots of wildflowers. You can see my somewhat puny peonies here, and my hydrangeas. Hopefully they’ll continue to grow and flourish if we can keep the deer population at bay!
I don’t know what this plant near the front porch is, but it grows like a weed. I’m always chopping it back. My flower pots have almost been eclipsed by whatever monster this plant is.
I’ve been excited to see the shrubs and flowers take off this year. I know that some of this stuff takes a while to really get to the stage where they are producing lots of flowers, but it’s getting there, and I couldn’t be happier!
Lots and lots of daisies!
One of our goals this summer has been to get our backyard a little more cozy and entertaining-friendly. First we worked on the back patio, as you can see below.
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You can read more about how we set up our patio for relaxing and dining in this post. Once the back patio was squared away, we turned our attention to adding a few improvements to the yard itself. We started with the fire pit area. The fire pit was installed when our landscaping was completed two years ago. But it wasn’t until this summer that we got around to adding some seating there and really making it user friendly.
Earlier this summer we purchased six wooden Adirondack chairs. They are just so comfortable, and we have had fun holding some family s’mores parties back here, as well as just enjoying the warmth of a fire on a cool fall evening. You can create a similar feel by installing a free standing fire pit in a spot in your backyard, like the ones in the links below. Again, comfy chairs and some pillows are all you need to make memories while gathered around an inviting fire.
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We have lots and lots of wildflowers planted to the side of the house and some in the back. We are planning on adding more wildflower seeds this fall in hopes of filling in some of the bare spots.
I have always loved a pretty white birdhouse, so it was my lucky day when I found this one at a craft fair. It was handmade by an elderly gentlemen, and I knew it would be the perfect addition to our backyard. I will eventually have it mounted on a post and move it into the flower bed behind it (which will hopefully be full of wildflowers instead of looking rather forlorn, as it does here), but for now it’s happily resting on the rock wall. I think tucking a pretty birdhouse or even some bee skeps into the landscaping here and there help to add a little spark of interest to a backyard.
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And last, but definitely not least, we added a water fountain to the backyard as well, because I love to sit in the backyard and read to the sound of trickling water. These water fountains are so easy to install – they just require access to electricity to run the pump. This one of ours is self-contained, meaning you just add water to the trough, and it pumps away while adding that relaxing trickling water sound to your outside space.
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I’m hoping that we can coax that climbing rose into making more of a show in the next couple of years. The deer have LOVED the roses we planted (I know, I know – I was warned!), but I’m hoping the deer will move on to our neighbor’s newly-planted landscaping and leave mine alone next year! (Oops – evil thinking!)
I hope you’ve enjoyed my ramblings about our landscaping, and hopefully I’ve given you an idea or two that you can use to create some beautiful outside spaces into your own little slice of paradise! Thanks for stopping by today, friends!