Boulder Wall, NE Minneapolis
We built this low retaining wall of boulders and landscaped this front yard while I was at Local Roots Landscapers. There wasn’t much going on in the front yard here, other then the large evergreen tree. A lot of herbaceous plants are not friendly with evergreens, so I used native plants that have a natural friendship with or tolerance for evergreens. Our clients were two wonderfully friendly chaps who were interested in planting large amounts of berry bushes, so we added native serviceberry, chokecherry, and blueberry. They were also interested in discontinuing to mow the front slope. A retaining wall, mulch, and woody shrub combination helped solve that problem.
They finished the project by planting about a dozen blueberry hybrid bushes. I think the whole front yard was transformed from a semi-arid lawn desert into a fruitful, attractive, and low maintenance garden.
The clients wanted to keep some lawn around the lilac in the above picture so that the neighbor kids could run around it barefoot.
We used a combination of paper layers and wood mulch to keep the weeds down. This technique also helps to build soil health in certain situations, such as reclaiming a piece of lawn for gardens.
