Project Post - A Year in the Making

Many of you who follow here will remember where our side yard started out last fall when we purchased this house.  For those of you who don't, we have five large pine trees that run along the side yard.  The day after we moved in, we had some friends come over to help us trim the trees up
to the fence line. YES - there is a fence hidden back there!

We trimmed the first three last fall and the other two early in the spring this year.

I decided that instead of growing grass in the areas that were bare under the trees, I would instead plant gardens.  Here is what the side yard looked like last fall.

Since we have trimmed up the rest of the trees and under planted them, the garden now spans

approximately 80 feet along the side fence.

The cost to mulch this area would be quite large since it ranges from 8 to 20 feet deep in some spots.  However, these trees have provided me with mulch of their own in PINE NEEDLES.

Last fall I noticed a huge amount of needles that were falling out of the large pine near the road. Subsequently, I started raking them up and spreading them around the base of the tree in between the hostas that I had planted under them. We really thought we were lucky to have the pines instead of deciduous trees like Maples or Oaks that drop their leaves in the fall.  I have to say that I think that the pines are messier trees - BUT - their mess is at least useful to me in that it is now helping to keep the weeds down in the garden.

I have raked up the pine needles all year and now I can finally say that this garden is fully mulched!

They even have the colour of mulch and from the road you can't even tell that it's not actual mulch.

This project obviously took some time and work to complete, but it was FREE and  leaving this amount of needles on the lawn would not be good for it.  It's a great recycle project that gives so much benefit to the garden.  Yes the needles will eventually breakdown, but there will always be more needles to rake up and replace them with, so it's a WIN/WIN!!

Do you have a great recycle project that you have completed?  I'd love to hear about it!!

Cheryl