Something that we never really thought about before was the landscaping of our two trees on the side of our house. Don’t get me wrong we LOVE the shade that they provide! But this year the one tree has been looking really really sad with a lot more dead branches. We contacted someone to come tell us how to help our trees and hopefully save them.
Things we have not been doing is mulching around are trees 3-4ft away from the base, giving it a lot of extra water during the hot summer months (it needs way more water then the grass) and giving the tree its own fertilizer. The thing we have been doing is removing the dead branches from the tree. So we started on mulching around the trees plus watering it more. Here is our tree last year at spring time.
And here is the same tree today after mulching. We think it looks 10x better than before.
And because I like a side by side comparison here is both of our side trees. The one on the left has not had mulch and the one on the right does.
First we removed the grass surrounding the tree about 3 ft from the base of the tree. We had to be very careful because the roots were close to the ground and we did not want to damage them. After removing the grass, we placed two bags of organic mulch (this is the same mulch we used on our flower beds) around the base of the tree. Then we watered the tree. We plan on buying a soaker hose to place around the tree base and we will water for 6-8 hours, 5-8 times a month during the summer months.
We feel that adding the mulch around the tree has updated our trees and yard. Look at the difference, what tree looks better to you?
We have mulched around the other tree but I have not taken pictures yet. So imagine it looking just as good as the other tree… This update cost us less than $25 for the two trees ($6 bags of mulch and we used 4 bags).
Anyone else doing some landscaping?
Hi! Brand new follower here! I have three trees in our backyard (brand new homeowners as of March 2017) that need some TLC (like yours) and I’m just so curious how you two safely and (SO PERFECTLY) removed the grass surrounding the base. I have no idea how to do that, lol. Thanks for any guidance! I love your blog! It’s so inspiring!
Hi, Alyssum and welcome to the blog! To remove the grass we used both a little gardening shovel plus a smaller hand shovel (has a smaller blade, looks like (affiliate) this). And believe me when I say those are not perfect circles. It also helps to have the ground damp around the tree to help make it easier to remove the grass. What we did first was made the circle we wanted with the smaller hand shovel around the tree (only digging into the ground a small distance, enough to remove the grass). If you wanted a nice circle you could use stakes, place them the distance around the tree you wanted then connect them with a string. Then we started removing the grass being mindful of the tree roots. Also, I would suggest adding some sort of landscaping edging to help keep the grass from coming back (we will be doing this soon). Let me know if you have any other questions and best of luck with the projects!!