Free Landscaping

I think I mentioned I am about 5K short for next year with all the things I want to do. In the budget for next year I have a landscaping column. My poor little house isn't very decorative on the outside because I've had to do so much on the inside. So I allotted $500 to get about 90 linear feet around the house landscaped. nothing too fancy, just some nice evergreen shrubs, bulbs and pine bark.

So yesterday, we went to the boy's hunting cabin. It is a little 500 Sf house in the middle of nowhere on a mountain in VA. He has about 5 acres with 4 of that being wooded. As we were driving in to mow (it is really overgrown and it so hard to mow - that is a different post tho) he points out the shrub I was going to buy at home depot was growing all over his property! So I was able to dig one up to bring home and saved $18.

Then I started on the ferns, there were thousands of them. Then he had the great suggestion of collecting the rock moss that they sell here at landscaping stores for a ton. You just pick at an edge of it and it comes up in sheets.

This isn't the best picture, but this is one of the three fern groupings I dug out, along with some of the moss. I have about 50 feet that is shaded enough to have ferns and moss so next week we are going back armed with trashbags and shovels.

I can't use ferns and moss on the front of the house because I have a lot of direct sunlight. But this has knocked $300 off my landscaping column for next year. Only $4700 to go!