landscaping adventures

One of the downsides of our community is that landscaping the front and back of our house is 100% our responsibility, unlike some other new communities around Denver where you're only responsible for the backyard. However, once complete, we do receive a small escrow refund, which will barely cover our sprinkles.

The upside is that we're 100% in control of what our landscaping looks like, which is really exciting because in our world, landscaping for the past 9 years has consisted of a small concrete patio, a couple pots and a stinky fence. So, we've wholeheartedly (and quite excitedly) embraced designing our dream landscape.

One of the contingencies of actually receiving our landscaping escrow is to submit a detailed design plan to our community's design review board, which they in turn need to approve. Because we're new to this, we reached out to a couple landscaping companies to help take our thoughts, improve on them and put them down on paper.

What we were unprepared for is the cost of landscaping. It's easily double what we bugeted for, and while we've found some cost savings doing things ourselves, it really isn't that much cheaper to say lay your own sod or plant your own trees. We also weren't prepared for all of the very long-term, expensive decisions that we'd be making. How the hell are we supposed to know where our best views will be when the lots next to us haven't even sold? Our solution is to scale down the number of shrubs where we think there might be a view and add to it down the road once all the houses in our neighborhood are built. So, we're bulking up on landscaping for our front yard, and doing something a little more bare with the back, adding additional patio space and doing what we can to create some privacy.

The company we chose, B&D Landscaping, has been phenomenal to work with. They came up with an amazing plan for our limited (albeit enormous-to-us) budget. But, keeping with the theme of this whole house journey, debated for weeks over which plants we should use, where they should be and if we really wanted to stretch our budget to do things now vs. later.

This is a sneak peak of how our yard looks on paper:

I love it, but have to be honest. I'm a little nervous how it will all look in person. And, I'm still a little nervous about if we really did chose the best/right plants, trees and shrubs. I'm also insanely excited to see it installed. Once we're moved in, I'll take pictures of the progress. For now, I'm content to draw stick figures on the patio and envision it's Evan and I sipping wine while watching the sunset.