Front Garden Makeover:

Welcome dear reader.

The great outdoors deserves a worthy welcome, and what better place to begin than right at your doorstep. Revamping a front garden if you're lucky enough to have one, is not just about aesthetics, it can be a sanctuary that reflects your personality, something that makes a first impression, a calming and relaxing area to do a spot of gardening or just to relax in, and somewhere inviting for people and wild life alike.

The Project:

To give my mother's very tired looking front garden a new lease of life by re-turfing the main area, creating borders for plants and make a couple of focus points for more planting. The front garden path needed a little tidy up with the addition of some path lighting, a repainted front gate and front door to match the garden colour scheme. It would be designed for easy maintenance yet still giving it curb appeal with a vibrant floral statement... and most importantly, creating somewhere my mother would love.

The Inspiration:

With my mother getting on in years, she wanted to redecorate the house, something she would have loved to have done herself as she had done before. But due to her health deteriorating due to illness, this was something she was now unable to do... and that included maintaining the front and back gardens. I offered to the the work for her and we discussed plans of how she wanted things to look, but then I had my own physical health issues that put things on hold.

A while later, she was admitted into hospital were she had to stay for nearly 2 months, and for her to return home her upstairs bedroom had to be relocated downstairs. So I pushed through my own lower spine ailments and got on with redecoration the entire house and the two gardens. The last job I did was the doing the front garden as this was already not in great shape and was temporarily used for putting decorating rubbish in for it to be cleared. My mum would be mostly be living and sleeping in the front lounge with the front garden directly outside, so this would be something she would see every day, so I wanted it to look the best I could make it, using her ideas... and it worked as she was overjoyed and emotional when she came home and saw the garden (and later the rest of the house).

The Making:

1. To clear all of the rubbish
2. Then turn over/rotavate the old turf and soil
3. Clear any old and unwanted roots, stones and other debris
4. Create borders and focal points using decking boards and decretive edging
5. Returf the main garden area with rolls of turf
6. Fit some garden path LED lighting
7. Paint front door and gate

This was not a particularly difficult project to do, although my spine issues didn't help, but it was a rewarding one in more ways than one, and was a happy finish to a busy and tiring two month house decorating project.

Step 6 contains a small order of operation for when I also did the back garden that you may find useful.

Please note, I intended to share this process on Instructables in order to help other readers who may be looking for help and advice on how to regenerate their outdoor living spaces. That said, I did take a load of pictures of the process on a small digital camera, but unfortunately some unscrupulous swine stole my camera from the garden (my fault for being hot and tired and leaving the camera outside when I went in to get a cold drink... DOH!), and I was only left with mainly before and after photos I took with my phone which I have included here. So I do apologies for that and have written as much easy to understand details to fill in the gaps. Although with that being said, I think that for this particular project, written instruction explains things better than how to photos would.

The following are the items I used to do my mothers front garden.

Tools:

1. Garden fork to turn the old turf/soil over (or an electric rotovator, better for larger gardens)
2. Garden spade/shovel
3. Yard broom
4. Dustpan and brush
5. Bucket
6. Garden rake
7. Gardening knife
8. A saw to cut wood
9. Paint brush (and an optional paint roller)
10. Hammer or rubber mallet to knock in wooden stakes
11. Electric wire cutters/strippers for LED lights
12. Soldering iron for LED lights
13. Hose pipe to water the new turf

Materials:

1. Rolls of turf
2. Weed membrane sheet
3. Lengths of wood (I used decking boards)
4. Pieces of board to use as 'stand boards' while laying turf.
5. Scrap treated wood to make stakes
6. External/garden paint
7. Set of solar LED garden lights
8. Small diameter PVC tubing
9. Outdoor fairy lights
10. Photocell sensor light switch
11. Electrical wire
12. Electrical wire heat shrink tubes
13. Plant pots of your choice
14. Plants of your choice
15. Decorative grey slate
16. Soil for plant pots
17. Stone effect decorative border edging

*The material links I have listed above are U.K links as that's where I am, so they are intended for reference so you can purchase the same or similar items in your location.

List of the Following Steps:

1. Step 1 Prep Work: Preparing the ground before turning.
2. Step 2 Laying the New Turf: Tips on laying new grass.
3. Step 3 Setting Out the Borders & Focus Point Beds: Fitting out new plant boarders.
4. Step 4 LED Path Lighting: Adding some custom outside lighting.
5. Step 5 Final Jobs: Finishing touches to the front garden.
6. Step 6 Bonus Step - The Back Garden: A brief look at the rear garden tidy up.
7. Step 7 Conclusion: Some final thoughts.

Build Time:

1. About 5 days including 2 days wait time for soil settling.

1. First thing, if you already have grass, is to mow the old lawn at the lowest blade setting, then get rid of any weeds by forking out the roots and anything else that shouldn't be there such as old bits of wood, large stones etc.
2. Then dig with a shovel and/or fork (or rotovate) the soil. You should go to a depth of roughly 20cm (8 inches). As you can see in the photos, the soil had lots of lumpy soil, so be sure to break up any compacted soil like this.
3. To help with the health of your new turf, spread over some good quality compost. This will help to hold moisture in the soil.
4. Ideally at this point, you want to leave the ground to settle for a few days at least. I did hear that leaving it up to six weeks or so is better, but I had time constraints so I left mine for two days and in the end that worked well for me.
5. Then check the ground for any leftover weeds and remove.
6. Now you can level and firm up the soil by walking over all of it several times and in different directions by using small, shuffling steps. The you can now rake over the entire area, again in different directions. Break up or remove any left over lumps of compacted soil.
7. The prep work is pretty much done, but as an optional step if you have poor or light soil, add some all purpose fertiliser by spreading it over and raking it into the soil.
8. What I also did here was to dig up some of the soil from the boarders (the main garden and along the pathway), lay some weed membrane sheet, then pour the soil back over the top of the sheet. This is because I was only be going to use potted plants and not bedded plants.
9. The I drove in some screwdrivers into the soil and tied some lengths of string to mark out the borders from the main soil area.

Now I could move onto the laying the new turf.

Top tips:

For a small aera like this front garden, using a spade and fork worked perfectly fine for turning and breaking the soil. But for larger areas, a better option would be to borrow, purchase or hire a powered rotovator. If you decide to use a rotovator and have never used one, please be aware that if the blades find any small stones, those stones will turn into projectiles, so be wary of any people or animals around you, as well as anything that can be damaged like windows for example. And if those blades find a large root, it can pull the tool from your sands very suddenly, so please be aware of that too.

And if you use a corded rotovator (or any corded power tool) always be cautious of where the cable is while your working.

Also, if you decide to use all purpose fertiliser, follow the manufacture's recommended rate (generally it's about 35 to 40 grams per square meter).

With the measurements taken for how much turf I needed, it was off to the garden center to pick some up. I went there as soon as it opened as I was going to lay it the same day because ideally, new turf should be laid withing 24 hours from getting it (collection of delivered). I checked the condition of the turf rolls available, making sure they were a nice rich green colour, free of weeds, and just as importantly checking that the ones I chose were all the same width.

1. Starting in one corner of the soil area, lay your first roll of turf ensuring the long edge is evenly spaced from your border and running along the string you used to mark out the border.
2. Then lay your next and subsequent rolls, making sure each roll is butted up close and tight to the next one, both along the ends and each side. Lay each line of turf so they are staggered like how bricks are laid. Use a gardening knife to cut off any excess turf using a straight edge like a piece of wood to make straight cuts. NOTE: Avoid standing or kneeling directly on the new turf and use a piece of board on top of the turf where necessary.
3. While laying the turf, check to make sure it is level and take away or add soil where needed.
4. When you have finished laying the new turf, use a reasonable firmness to tap the turf down with a lightweight roller or use a 'Tamper'. You can make a Tamper using a flat piece of wood like plywood attached to a rake with zip ties or a long piece of wood for a handle with some brackets or braces. Use a couple of pieces of board to stand on while doing this.
5. At this point, I used the gardening knife to cut out the two 'D' shapes for the border focal points.
6. Then to help knit the turf together and help it establish quicker, scatter some compost onto the lawn and brush it into the joints using a broom or dustpan brush, again using the standing boards.
7. As you can see in the above photos, the new grass was looking rather flat and lacking bright colour. These were taken a day after I laid it and when I put the borders in. This is fine as it will take time for the grass to fluff up and grow in its rich green colour. And to achieve this, watering the turf is very much needed. If you do not have rain in your location forecast, water the turf well but leave it undisturbed for a few days as this is the important time for the grass to develop its roots.
8. If the weather is dry, water the grass well and regularly, every day for about 2 to 3 weeks watering once in the early morning and again in the early evening (especially important if the weather is particularly hot during the day as the water will evaporate quicker).
9. After a few weeks, you can mow the grass with the blades set to a higher cutting level, then gradually lower the blade to the height of your choice over the coming weeks.

With the lawn now laid, trimmed and watered, we can now get on sorting out the boarders.

Top tips:

Be careful not to over-water the lawn as it can suffocate and die. And if only the top of the new turf gets wet, this can lead to shallow roots and coarse weed grass. Some people like the coarser weed grass, but others don't and it wasn't something my mother wanted either.

You will find that there are different views on how often to water new turf. The way I did it was taught to me from a gardener friend, and his advice served me well as the grass looked great when it established. You should also take note when it rains. If it rains you won't have to water it as much, but that said if it's only a light rain or short shower, that may not be enough and manually watering it may still be needed for that day.

With the turf laid, and borders prepped, and not wanting to disturb the turf too much while it established, I set out to finish them off using decking boards and decorative border edging.

1. Measure out the borders to get the measurements to cut the decking boards to size. Then remove the string you used to mark out the borders.
2. Cut the decking boards to size, then using some scrap treated wood, make some stakes double the width of the decking boards, and pointed at one end to drive into the ground. You want to make enough stakes so that each board (about 2.4 meters or so) has at least 4 stakes each.
3. Screw the stakes to the back of the decking boards equally spaced apart
4. Take the opportunity now to paint the boards/stakes with weatherproof wood paint. Painting them now is easier than painting them when they are in place. Two or three coats depending on the thickness of the paint, front, back and sides.
5. Now to fit them, using the standing boards on the turf. Hammer in the stakes into the ground just at the edge of the turf, driving them down until the base of the decking board touches the ground. Use a rubber mallet, or if you're using a metal hammer, place a scrap piece of wood on top of the stake/board to hammer on to. Knock one stake in a little way down, then move to the next and so on, repeating this until the board is fully in place.
6. Now spread some new soil over the old and level out for a nicer aesthetic look.
7. Moving on to the 'D' shape areas, hammer in the decorative edging for the focal points. You may need to loosen the soil a bit to drive them down fully.
8. Take out some soil, cut and fit some weed membrane sheet, then recover with the soil.
9. This is where I then spread over some decorative blue/grey slate chippings to both areas. They look grey when dry and a nice rich blue/grey when wet.

So the boarders around the turf, focal points and pathway now fitted and covered, it was now time to finish off. A quick sweep and tidy up of the area, then onto the next step.

Top tip:

A quick and simple one... don't skimp on using the weed membrane sheet as you may regret it if you don't, and use good quality ones too.

Full disclosure, I purchased a set of 10 solar powered garden lights with a backup plan in mind. The front of the house was north facing so I was aware that they might not get enough sunlight, especially U.K sunlight lol. So I fitted the lights along the garden path within the boarders and a couple in the plant pots. They were nice lights and gave off good illumination, but as I feared, they would only stay on for about 4 hours at most (on a good day) as they were not getting enough sunlight to recharge the batteries.

So over to the backup plan... to wire them up and run them off mains power with a photocell sensor switch to turn them on and off at dusk and dawn, and fitting some garden fairy lights. The solar lights came in three parts... the light itself, a hollow tube that the light press fit in to one end, and the stake press fit in the other, and the stake. Each light contained a 3.5v rechargeable battery.

As well as purchasing some lengths of small diameter PVC tubing to cover the cables, I purchased a set of garden fairy lights. These were waterproof, wired in series, came in a string of 10 (the correct amount the the solar lights I had), and were low voltage yet bright. So here is how I wired them up.

1. When received, I cut the fairy lights into 10 separate lights with equal lengths of cable. I would now wire these lights in parallel (see top tips below).
2. I continued by drilling a hole in the side of each of the solar light tubes at one end. This was to feed the electrical wire through and would be at the stake end.
3. Then I took the tops of the lights off, removed the battery and disconnected the solar cell. I then fed the fairy light wires through the bottom of the light housing and let the lights sit inside, then re-fitted the tops.
4. Next I took a roll of electrical cable outside and roughly measured out and cut the wire lengths needed. I also measured and cut to length the PVC tubing. This would be used to feed the cable through to stop animals chewing on it.
5. The cables were then stripped each end, then I started by soldering and, with heat shrink tubes, insulating one end of one cable length to a light. These were LED lights so polarity was important.
6. I fed the wire through the solar light tube, fitted the light together and placed it into position in the garden border.
7. Then I fed the cable through a length of the PVC tubing, soldered and insulated the other end of the cable, along with one end of a second length of cable to another solar light.
8. Next the First length of PVC tubing was laid down and covered with soil to hide it.
9. I continued wiring up and placing the rest of the lights the same way.
10. With the final end of the last wire fitted to the last light, this was fed back to the house, and connected to the photocell sensor switch which I drilled and screwed to the outside of the house.
11. Then I fed the power cable from the sensor through a small hole I drilled in the front door window frame which was then filled with filler (the window to the right of the door in the photos). The cable was fitted to a mains powered 3.5 volt adapter and plugged in.
12. After initial testing to make sure it all worked, it was just a matter of waiting for the darkness to fall outside and adjust the sensitivity of the sensor.

It was some extra work, but in the end it was well worth it to have nice, bright, low powered and reliable outside path lighting.

Top Tip:

Some will know this, some may not so this may be helpful. Here are the differences between 'in series' and 'parallel' in electrical wiring: Using three 3 volt lights and a battery as an example, 'in series' is where the three lights are like a daisy chain. Parallel is like a tree, all of the branches join to the same trunk. Or another way of putting it, series is all or nothing, parallel is every man for himself.

Series: The positive wire from light 1 goes to the battery positive terminal and the negative wire from light 1 connects to the positive wire on light 2... The negative wire from light 2 connects to the positive wire from light 3... The negative wire from light 3 goes back and connects to the negative terminal of the battery. If one light fails, all three will stop working (3v+3v+3v = 9v battery needed but use the same current).

Parallel: Like what I did wiring up the garden lights, the positive wires from all three lights connect together. The negative wires from all three lights connect together. All three joined positive wires connect to the positive battery terminal, and all three joined negative wires connect to the negative battery terminal. If one light fails, the other two will still work. (three 3v lights in parallel will still use a 3v battery, but the current increases).

Series shares the current... parallel shares the voltage.

Now for the really fun part (for me anyway). Those all important finishing touches to complete this fab little project.

1. I rescued and cleaned up some plant pots and purchased a couple more along with some potting soil and some colourful potting plants.
2. I simply poured the soil into the pots, then potted the plants following the advice I got from the garden center, then placed them onto the borders and focal areas. (I am no gardener but knew certain things had to be done potting certain plants/flowers. If you're unsure about potting plants, seek advice form your local plant/flower seller as they are normally more than willing to help).
3. Next job was to paint the metal front gate with a black external metal paint. I took the gate off and painted it in the back garden so nobody accidently got paint on them. Once it was dry, I re-hung the gate.
4. The next job was the front door. You may notice that when it was dark red, it had a flat surface. This was a piece of hardboard that had been on there for years. I decided to take this board off to expose the original recess panels. I used a heat gun and scraper to strip the old paint, ribbed the door down with sandpaper and a sanding block, then re-painted it with a contemporary looking silk grey paint and repainted the door frame gloss white. A new door number wall plate was also fitted.
5. I then painted black the damp course on the bottom of the house. I mention this as well as the front door, gate and house number plate because it's these little details that really helps make the rest of the garden stand out.

All that was left to do was a final tidy and sweep, water the turf again and the plants, and wait for my mother to come home from hospital, which she did a day later. Talk about cutting it close lol.

And it was this point I was wondering if she would approve of what I did... and she did... very much so in fact, "phew".

As I mentioned in the introduction, I also gave my mum's south facing back garden a much needed tidy up as well. Apart from purchasing some red bark, small shingle stones, a set of cheap solar lights and some garden paint, I used scrap pieces of wood and other bits and pieces to make it look a little better. I have included the before and after photos just to give you some ideas and inspiration if you want to tidy up your garden and don't have a lot to spend on it. Here's a brief order of operation...

1. I started off by making a small seating deck from some scrap wood and placed a wooden/metal bench on it for my mother to sit on, located near the house so she didn't have far to walk.
2. Then I mowed the grass and remove any unwanted items (I cleared out the shed so had extra stuff to get rid of).
3. Next I got rid of any unwanted weeds and dead plants from the borders.
4. Painted tom old wooden boards, made and attached some wooden stakes to them, then hammered them in to make plant bed boarders. I used a length of string fixed to each end of the flower bed, measured so the distance between the grass edge and fence were equal.
5. At the end of the garden, I flattened the soil surface, made some more wooden boarders, placed a sheet of weed membrane down, them emptied out a few bags of red bark shavings.
6. By the house, after the rubbish was cleared I placed paving slabs down from the door to the garden path, then laid more weed membrane down then covered with bags of small stones. Note that I also made and painted a small wood border around the drain and manhole cover.
7. I then dug out a square in the grass, turned the soil over so it was loose, and made a border with some old bricks. This was to make a bird dust bath area with a water feature placed in the middle for the birds to drink from and wash in. This was used almost daily by Starlings, Sparrows, Robins and the occasional squirrel.
8. Then placed some potted plants around the borders and added some solar powered garden lights.

Not masses of work really done here and not a lot of money spent, but it made a big difference.

Giving this front garden a new lease of life was very satisfying and I learned a few thing during the process. I moved back in to my mums home so I could be her career so managed to maintain the gardens, both back and front, for her although she did manage to do a little herself. From finishing the garden and through the two and a half years my mother was with us before her illness got the better of her, she very much enjoyed the front garden from doing a little bit of gardening where she could to keep her active, to just sitting by the window looking out at it.

If you are lucky enough to have an outside space which needs a little makeover, then I hope my Instructable has shown you that with a little incentive and elbow grease, you too can give that tired space a beautiful and tranquil new look that will give you endless enjoyment and satisfaction.

Thanks for reading, and happy making.