A Mount Pleasant West garden renovation

Less lawn, more garden? That's alright with me!

While all my work projects are small-scale since I work alone, they vary constantly depending on the client's needs and, ahem, budget. Sometimes it involves moving or adding plants to an existing garden or it could mean enlarging the size of a garden. This small but labour-intensive job shown in this post is an example of resizing a garden by removing turf. It's definitely not an xeriscape project (adding new hydrangeas is anything but xeriscaping) but a small patch of lawn was removed to allow for a larger garden bed

Here's the area of work below.  The client asked me to remove all the lawn to a certain point (I'd estimate it was about 120 square feet), enlarging the existing garden bed, plant four new "Limelight" hydrangea standards and some English Ivy for ground cover.

Sounds simple, right? Sure, simple in design but not in execution as anyone who has removed turf by hand intimately knows. (Using a backhoe to scrape off the lawn doesn't count. I guess we call that "landscraping?")

Mount Pleasant West front garden renovation before 

Removing the sod was slow and physically-demanding for an old geezer like myself. Even with a brand new spade, cutting into the turf and lifting it out felt like....work! You can see how brown the lawn is (it's been very dry this summer so far) but the rolls of turf I cut out still weighed a ton (it seemed).

But I carried on and here's an "after" picture showing the enlarged bed.

I moved the row of yellow daylilies to the front (per the client's request) and transplanted four new "Limelight" Pee Gee hydrangea ( Hydrangea paniculata "Limelight" ) standards in a grid. She also wanted English Ivy to fill in as a ground cover so we planted a dozen plugs or so.

Mount Pleasant West front garden renovation after 

Mount Pleasant West garden renovation removing lawn before

Mount Pleasant West garden renovation removing lawn after

Mount Pleasant West garden renovation removing lawn before 

Mount Pleasant West garden renovation removing lawn after 

Mount Pleasant West Toronto garden renovation removing lawn before 

Mount Pleasant West Toronto garden renovation removing lawn after 

It's a formal look with the green colour scheme which fits in with the neighbourhood's front yard aesthetics.

A neighbour walked over while I was working and asked what the plan was. After I explained the concept, she gave her approval.

The client and I are relieved!