‘Tis the season when we start spending a lot of time outside and I finally feel as if I have a good handle on what is happening with our garden, backyard and garage. I’ve written a lot about our backyard, garden and garage over the years, but even most recently as I admitted we had quite an embarrassing mess in the garage and also that we were redoing our backyard. But we did a lot of work this weekend and it’s finally looking like we’re getting in a good place, so here are the backyard updates on where we are and what I hope will come next.

If you haven’t read about our gardens before, see here for what the garden areas looked like our first spring in the house, and here and here for a couple of garden projects. Things changed drastically last fall when we got rid of a hedge and lots of rose bushes in order to make a more playable space and a backyard that is easier to maintain. See here and here for those updates. Here is Boss Bar, aka what our garage looked like in its prime, and here is recent progress after we finally started organizing it after a couple of years of mess.

All caught up? Cool. Here is where things are now. So much better, right?!

We have a few things to fill in, still gardening and garage clean up to do, and we need to add more closed storage to the garage. So I have a few ideas of what I plan to do next, taking my time with it over the summer as my free time and budget allow.

In the photo of the garage above, there are a number of things we need to get rid of, like so many extra chairs that we don’t need. I also what to add closed storage for all of our gardening and outdoor decor items in that back left corner.

I’d like to move this green and silver cabinet to elsewhere and get firewood storage to place there instead so we’ll have a neater solution than what we have now, which is just tossing wood into the gap between the cabinet and the old work bench.

I’d like to add more ferns to line the fence since this is just a dark side alley that collects a lot of weeds. I’m fine with it being overgrown, but I’d prefer if it were overgrown in a wild way that is also pretty. There are already ferns growing on the far left side of the above photo and I like how they look in this section of our backyard.

Below are photos of where our hedge used to be, lining the other side of our yard, the full length of our driveway from the sidewalk to the garage in the back. I have plans for this area on the streetside of our property and the side of our backyard.

From the sidewalk to the fence, I’m going to lay down weed barrier, mulch or wood chips, large walking pavers and then leave room for 2 or 3 plants to help give privacy between our house and our neighbor’s but very few since I don’t want to cause any issues with getting our car up and down our narrow driveway. I’m thinking a forsythia and rhododendron, but this may change.

In the back, you can see the hostas are popping up on the left side. They are easy perennials that can withstand our dog and are green from early spring through fall, so I’m thinking of filling this entire strip with more hostas. They are expensive though, so I think this will take me a long time.

If you have any ideas, let me know!