Passions and Pastimes

How To Reclaim Your Outdoor Space

July 4, 2021 / 12 Comments

This year my Husband and I decided to reclaim our outdoor space. We live in a 3 story apartment building, in the city. We have lived here for seven years and seen neighbors come and go and watched the slow deterioration of the property. It is a very old apartment building with not a lot of outward charm. The front of the building is pretty close to the sidewalk, but does have a small amount of frontage for planting things and there is a decent backyard and that is located on a river.

The main thing is that this is an apartment building and it’s not our property. However we are fortunate to know our landlord really well so it makes it a bit easier for us to do things than maybe others in this situation. So the goals for us were not to spend a ton of money, but have it look really nice in the end. So here are a few tips on what we did that may be helpful and creative.

  • Start simple. Just cleaning up the debris in of itself was liberating.
  • Use things around you. Luckily people had left rakes, shovels, gardening tools and garden hoses laying around. I think we only bought pruning sheers for the job. Also the planters we used were from what was laying around as well.
  • Buy inexpensive. It’s not your property, don’t spend a lot of money is the key here.
  • A lot of regular weeding, watering and small maintenance goes a long way.

When taking on a big project such as ours it is best to break it down in to smaller steps. The front of the building was our first focus. We ended up filling three 55 gallon trash bags of trash, old grass and tree branches . Next we reworked the dirt and finished pulling up new invasive weeds that were trying to grow. Then we bought 4 bags of top soil to mix in with the old dirt. A friend of ours gave us some Hostas to plant which have done pretty well. I had some old apple boxes, filled those with top soil and bought some pansies to go in the boxes. Pansies are one of my favorite flowers and they have done quite well. We also planted a couple other perennial plants that would spread to cover the glaring brown spots and bloom all summer long. Then in the rest of the bare spots we scattered a wildflower mix which has gone a little crazy.

One of the best things about this project was hearing our neighbors compliment us for how we were improving the appearance of the front of our building.

Now it was time to tackle the backyard. We ended filling up at least five 55 gallon trash bags of debris. Once the back yard was cleaned I wanted to have a raised garden. I did a little digging on Pinterest to get some ideas of what I can do. Given that the price of wood is quite expensive this year we decided to look for a more practical route. We had an old claw foot bathtub sitting the yard that was from the first floor apartment. A lightbulb went off and It was an excellent inexpensive idea for the garden. It needed a little clean up and paint job to make it look nice. We decided to paint ours bronze with a white rim, then drilled some drainage holes in the bottom. To fill the tub we bought two 40lb bags of river rocks for the bottom, seven 40lbs of top soil, and two 40lb bags of composted cow manure. We planted 2 tomato plants, 2 cucumber plants and 2 zucchini plants. Then in pots reclaimed from our porch garden we put in front of the tub, 3 different pepper plants.

Last but not least we reseeded the backyard. This took a lot of raking and trying to make the ground somewhat level. Unfortunately this can be quite the expensive project. Since we rent only wanted to buy enough special soil to cover major areas. So we bought 1 big bag of grass seed and then once again our neighbors were so impressed with us doing great things they gave us more grass seed. So some of the grass has started to come in however it has been so dry and temperatures all over the place our poor yard is not doing so well. I will say though that it is growing in at a slow pace so there is some promise our grass might be lush by the end of the summer. So I unfortunately do not have good pictures of grass as I hoped I would. However I would like to share a gallery of pictures of our progress so far.

  • New beginnings right side of the stairs
  • Full Bloom
  • New Beginnings left side of the stairs
  • Full bloom and a little crazy
  • Let the refurbishing begin
  • Filling with all the dirt
  • Our beautiful garden

To complete my backyard slice of heaven I turn to my porch itself. Last year we started a porch garden because we could not use the backyard very well. We planted fresh vegetables in pots and our little garden did ok. I also have a bistro table that I had planted flowers in which died over time because they weren’t the right flowers. This year I did a little research to find out what plants would do well in shade and bloom all summer long. I found that Inpatients were the best choice. Aside from an unruly squirrel they have been doing great! In order to combat the squirrel it was suggested to me to put mint around my plants. I happened to be growing mint so I pinched a few sprigs, stuck them in the soil and have not had a problem since.

We have been fortunate that we have a landlord that pretty much lets us do anything we want. In a couple of weeks we were able to turn around the overall aesthetic of the building and make my view from the back porch enjoyable once again.

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