The Pool Process - Landscaping Completion

I've been calling stores everyday for their sod inventory. Did you know that most stores will only stock sod on Thursday or Friday night? I am assuming because most people lay sod on the weekend. Rain was predicted, but I decided to go ahead and take my chances and do whatever I could before the gloomy weather showed up.

Days before, I leveled out the ground, clearing the rocks and laying a layer of top soil. Here are our before shots.

You can see our old grass starting to grow back. It's too bad that we don't want our old Bermuda grass. We decided to switch to St. Augustine, a less allergic grass since both my husband and R are highly allergic to Bermuda.

I picked up some sod on Thursday night. I came prepared lining the bed of my van before-hand. I even wore "sod-carrying" clothes that day to work and brought my gardening gloves to the store so that I could load the sod myself.

Here's my first load. 75 pieces of grass 24x16 lay here. Each piece was a lot heavier than I originally thought they would be.

Green grass is so lovely.

I originally was going to unload the grass and wait for my husband to come home to help me lay it, but I didn't see the point in that so I started laying the sod myself. I was done after an hour and was off to the store again for my second load of St. Augustine.

By the time I got back, my hubby was home. Yay! I was so drained at that point, but still managed to finish up. I did take a break to make dinner and do homework. When we were done, I must have stared at it for several minutes. I couldn't believe the instant improvement our yard looked. We were done and I absolutely love how it turned out.

I tried to keep our yard with very low maintenance shrubs and perennials. You can see in the images above, I have planted some Japanese Boxwood, roses, and Indian Hawthorne among our Peach and Plum tree. Below, I have calla lilies and hydrangeas.

I can't remember the name of these purple flowers, but they are also perennials. They have attracted so many butterflies to my yard.

The only annual I have planted are some pink begonias.

For the pool side of the yard, we decided to stay away from mulch. We figured that rocks were easier to maintain in the long run and less likely to fly into the pool. I have planted palm trees with irises which will bloom this summer.

Here is a shot of behind the pool. We have more palm trees with some Indian Hawthorne and some hollies.

In front of the pool equipment, I have planted a wax leaf lingustrum which will one day cover the the pool equipment nicely. They now have white beautiful blooms.

Behind our grotto, we have some low maintenance hollies.

That's my 3 week landscaping project.

We started with this:

And now have this

I am so excited to finally be done. My husband does want to plant some more grass near the back gate where the electrician dug trenches, but we'll have to ask our neighbor if they mind St. Augustine grass taking over first, since it is a more aggressive grass and will probably take over the Bermuda that we share. For me, the project is officially done and I am so relieved that what I envisioned in my little brain, now reality, is exactly what I want. We have spent so much time sitting on our porch just staring at all our hard work. What a relief that we are now finally done.