Garden Before and After

Thought you'd like to see some before and after photos of our garden.

First, the after photo  which was taken with a digital camera. I must have taken 50 photos to get this shot.

This photo was taken from our deck when we moved in (fall 2000). You can't really tell, but there are 2" thick vines hanging from several trees. 
We had to take them out by attaching them to our minivan & driving up the hill! They were too large to pull out even with our lawn tractor!
The following 5 photos were taken pre-digital and were scanned.

The next 4 photos are of the same spot in the garden - the area which will eventually become the patio in the woods.

Our first goal was to get the play set up. We had to remove several trees.

The bare dirt is where we removed a hill of dirt. Mr. Fanatic had so much fun renting a Bobcat and leveling out the ground! 

The girls didn't wait for the area to be finished ... as soon as it went up, they started playing on the play set. We brought it from California where it took up so much space in our little yard. 
We didn't realize that everyone in the Carolinas would have the really nice play sets! Oh well, it sufficed for a few years.

Here's the first project finished. The photo is dated August of 2001. At this point I already had a plan for the whole yard. The path and bed are still somewhat in the same place.

Here is what this same area looks like today. This is the left side of our yard as you look out from the deck.

This is the same area as you are down on the path.

Over the course of  4 years we landscaped the backyard to what it is today. Since the yard is so large it would have been too big of a project for us to do all at once, so we just did a section at a time. To make things easier to plant and less expensive, we bought smaller plants and divided many of them. 
Every time we'd work on a project we would say we were ready for a condo with a little patio! You can see more garden photos HERE

Pam