I love a good clearance sale

My husband I have slowly but surely been working on the front yard to make it look better. We're not going to be winning any landscape awards by any means, but my goal is to have nice curb appeal and show pride in our home.

Here is a picture of what we started with early this spring:



It's a bad iPhone picture.. sorry! On the right side of the yard there was never any definition between the planter and the grass. There was also tons of weed-y looking plants that looked messy. Our first plan of action was to define the space and pull all the "messy" plants to make the space look cleaner.


Here is the "after" for the right side. Much better! But the front planter has bugged me for a long time. I don't like the christmas-tree looking shrubs (like how I describe the plants? I have no idea what they are called).

This past weekend I went to Lowe's to find some plants to fix up the front planter with. And here is where the title of the post comes into play. Luckily I found TONS of plants on clearance! Sure, most of them were dead.. but I dug around and found the ones still alive. Most of the plants I planted below were either $.50 or $.25! Now I won't feel so guilty if I end up killing them.

(sorry, I took this picture right after we did the planter so everything is still really messy!)

It's not the best landscaping in the world, but it looks a lot better than before (in my opinion). It was very economical and I can always add more later down the road.

The section in the back left side is just ground cover, but I really like the ground cover plant. I have plans to put some planters there.

I LOVE galvanized bucket planters but I wonder if it may be too casual for my front yard...

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But then again, the inside of our home is pretty casual and we are a young couple.. thinking out loud here. What do you guys think?