Because this house was such a fixer-upper and needed so many big projects to essentials like bathrooms and the roof, it took me a while to get to the yard. I’m also not a gardener, or at least I haven’t been so far in my life, so aside from grass versus pavers, I wasn’t sure what to do in our backyard for a long time.
But over the past couple years, I’ve made some very impactful changes that have made this backyard a wonderful place, so much so that we just got married here!
Budget-Friendly Backyard Makeover
I have to start with the true before. This is the house
when we bought it in July 2018. There was a raised deck over an old cracked concrete patio, a broken hot tub, and several wooden structures on the deck and in the yard. They had had an above ground pool here for years, so there wasn’t really much grass in the backyard. There were several garden beds and some arborvitae/other hedge materials that were so thick, we couldn’t tell that there was an apple tree on that back fence until we removed them. There was a chain-link fence with slats around most of the yard. And there were two healthy blueberry bushes, which we have kept!
We spent a lot of time and money
cleaning the landscape up, and eventually ended up with a grassy yard and a
walkway all the way from the cracked patio to the gazebo and to the side gate. We also had the
fence redone, which made a huge difference.
Then two years ago I
redid the patio, which resulted in piles of dirt and gravel and rocks sitting here for a while, and the grass wasn’t that great to begin with. Now, most Oregon yards don’t look that great in the winter when this picture was taken, but this one was bad all year round.
Last summer, I had the yard leveled and sod installed. After this photo was taken I actually had them remove a couple feet of sod from the edges so that I had more room to plant edge plantings like white hydrangeas.
Last fall, we planted a ton! Mostly white hydrangeas, but my friend helped me pick out several other things like Snowberry and mock orange. (I like things with white flowers.) They were also a few other areas I had been improving since the patio, like a row of peonies and low white roses in front of the patio.
And here we are today. That same view from that first photo, from the patio looking out toward the gazebo.
A couple years ago, I added these huge planters from
Little Baja, an awesome local importer of pots from Mexico and more. I love the terra-cotta with a little extra detail. And I love how big they are! One day those olive trees will get bigger and they’ll look even cooler.
It is a joy to sit out here for dinner or to watch the kids play.
In this area under the cherry tree, we now have three swings and a
hammock!
We still have a small garden, these raised beds that get a lot of sun in the afternoon. That back corner used to house a sandbox, but the kids didn’t really play in it anymore so I removed it… Didn’t have time before the wedding to do much with that gravel area, so I ordered
this bench and it’s actually quite charming! Especially with the climbing vines I planted last fall.
Sitting in the bench gives you a nice view of the gazebo… It’s original, built right in the corner of the property. It’s so nice to have a covered area for lounge furniture.
We had this brick fireplace touched up before the wedding too. (This was the bar area.) Some fireplace people came and took a look back when I first bought the house and told me it wasn’t safe to use, and I haven’t investigated further. I think it has a pizza oven in it though. It looks cool, even if we can’t use it.
On the other side of the gazebo is a nice edge of mostly white hydrangeas, and the apple tree.
Across from that, you can see the back of the house… I’ve got to show you a before and after there!
The backyard was the perfect size for a wedding of 40 people!
I love the
hammock so much.
I also added some plants to this little area outside the fence. It gets a ton of sun, I had a hydrangea here for a while, but it was getting scorched so I moved it. The lavender does really well!
We had a couple other things done before the wedding, like finally getting the gutters painted. We
had them done after the
exterior paint so they were always white against the tan and it bugged me.
Most of the work we had done this summer to get ready for the wedding was done by a local yard guy I found in a local moms Facebook group, so only about $2,000 total for all kinds of things.
The backyard is still nothing fancy, but it feels so luxurious to have this space to ourselves and beautiful plants growing around us and swings for the kids and comfy furniture for us.
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