Ivy Land

Our house had some major landscaping issues when we bought it. (To be honest, it still has some major landscaping issues.) There were bushes that were growing all the way up to the second floor windows and most of the yard and house were covered in ivy.

(Sorry for the dark images.)

We ripped out most of the ivy and overgrowth before we even moved in and then again when we built the patio. Unfortunately there was still a large portion of the backyard covered in ivy. But after last week, we have finally eliminated ALL of the ivy! (Well... save for a small portion on the old fence on the side of the house that we plan to rip down soon.)

Ripping out the ivy looked something like this:


And after some serious elbow grease and patience it was looking much better. So we collected some sticks and twigs on the property and composted them. (We didn't compost the ivy because we thought it was a bad idea. We wouldn't want it to grow back in our plants and flower beds from the compost. Most likely it wouldn't, but we didn't want to risk it.)

Above is a view of our house from the "compost corner". As you can see, we still have a lot of work to do before our house is the backyard retreat that we envision...

Source

Source

Source

Source

Source

Source

Source

Just needed to remind you of what it used to look like.