On today’s journey over to the home of Vince and Lynn Vincent – where our landscaping project this week is taking place – I find that Jim and Todd are doing the bed prep.  Backing up in time a little, our landscape designer, Kristin Lucas, outlined the beds and sidewalk about 2 weeks ago.  She then sprayed the areas that we would be working with Roundup to kill out the unwanted vegetation.  When doing the sidewalk and the edging, we had to remove the dead sod, however, we are leaving that sod down where we are putting the plantings, and amending it with our premium landscape soil mix.  The dead grass will simply decompose and by doing this – will add some nutritional value to the soil, but it also has soil that is attached to the grass which stays in place rather than disposing of it if we don’t need to.  This provides a much better soil base than to remove some of the soil that is attached to the grass if we removed all of the dead sod.  Soil is everything to your new plants.  By giving them a supplement of some good planting mix – especially when you’re working on lots where a lot of the original soil is no longer even there – it gives the plants such a boost! 

Kristin is working with Jim and Todd for a little while this afternoon placing all of the plants she and the Vincents have chosen for the yard.  This is the fun part, because you know that it is only going to look better from here on out!  If the weather holds this afternoon, we should get the majority of the planting done and then on Monday they’ll finish up with the mulching of the beds!   Stay tuned next week for pictures of the completed project!!!!