Pretty Pretty Mailbox

I have found the most amazing plant nursery in Raleigh! To be fair it's one of the only nursery's I've been to so maybe they are all this cool, but it's huge and awesome! My Dad helped draw up a plan for our yard and I implemented phase 1 last week. We started with this. 

The plan was to create a bed around the mailbox for a couple of reasons. One, it would be pretty. Two, mowing around the mailbox is a pain the butt and we didn't want to do that anymore. So,  I used the hose to lay out the size and shape of the bed. When I was at the nursery I picked up some manure, soil conditioner, and my plants!

I went off the grid a little bit. My dad had suggested a juniper plant to be a low lying ever green but when I saw them at the nursery I didn't love them. I found these little green rosette looking guys and totally fell in love with them. We'll see how they fill out and end up looking but for now, I think they are adorable. 

Digging up the grass was the worst part! It was so hard and took so long! At least I had a Crosby to keep me company. This was also all while Derrick was at work so don't think he sent me out to work while he was chilling inside. He would have helped out if I had waited for him.

Naive me thought I could just neatly lay the grass in this box to dispose of. Crosby thought it would work too. She packed it down for me nice and tight. 

This is about the time I decided this looked good enough and almost called it a day. Looks good right?

Finally, here's what it looked like after I cleared the rest of the grass and planted my new plants. See how well I kept that grass in the box top? 

Later that week I went back to the nursery for a mandavilla. It's this climbing plant with big pink flowers that is going to be gorgeous behind the mailbox! I had to wait to get it later in the week because someone had claimed all the pink ones earlier in the week. I bought this trelis at Lowes and cut it down to the height of the mailbox. 

Gigantic rain storms have washed some of my dirt away but I think it looks pretty good! Lowes is having a sale on mulch right now so we're going to swing by and pick some up this evening and then the mailbox should be done!

Phase 1 complete! Phase bajillion million to go.