can I create a secret garden in front of my house?

Recently I did a major major makeover process to my entire bedroom I gutted the whole thing redesigned it all put the wall the ceiling the floors like everything basically got redone Um, however in the journey of doing that one of the big projects we did was knock a hole in this wall So we could put a door in to take me outside to the front of my home now I did all of that work for this door to basically go Nowhere nice And that's what we're gonna fix in today's video Now I did all of that work for this door to basically go nowhere nice.

And that's what we're gonna fix in today's video. Welcome back to the series where I challenge myself to use thrifted materials and a love of all things retro to DIY our family home from this farmhouse to that 70s house. So this door leads out to what is technically the front of the home. And I say technically because we don't actually use this as the front entrance to the house, which has caused a problem, which I'll get into in a second. This area has been entirely neglected.

There are some gardens on either side of me, which I think are more weeds than gardens right now. And I have one single stepping stone. Like literally, this is just to get me across this mud patch to exit this way. She ain't cute, okay?

She ain't cute. This little area actually is so lovely. It is such a cute little like secret garden-esque alcove out front here and I have since putting this door in come out to sit on these steps a lot because I just find it very relaxing to come out here and be in nature, get some fresh air and just have a moment. So I want to give

this spot a little love since I'm already liking her I think she can be better. Some of the other problems existing in this space are the siding, both this door and the window over there is unfinished since we had to cut through it to install this. These steps I'm sitting on were sort of a quicker fix just to have something and I think it can be done a little better. Now the gardening I I knew I would have to do. The stairs, I knew I would have to do. But since doing this door, a much bigger problem has arisen

that I was not anticipating. And it's important that you understand the anatomy of my home for this one to make sense. So come a little closer, we'll talk. Okay, friends, can I focus your attention to this fabulous drawing I have here for you. So this is the overhead view of my home and this is where we are sitting right now in this gorgeous, I guess will be beautiful,

garden area. Now to the side of the house is my driveway and on the side near the back is the front door that we use to access the home. Now should someone unfamiliar with the home show up, let's say a delivery person, they would drive up the driveway and go to that door in the back because it's really the only door you can see. Now since putting this door in when you drive up the driveway, this is the first door you are likely to see and of course likely to think is the front door. Now you can see how

this is probably a problem for me that this is my bedroom and a place that I don't want strangers just showing up. Now I'm not putting blame on anyone at all because I understand what this looks like and I know that I did this to myself. But since I created this problem, this is also now my problem to fix. This is the side of the house. Driveway is right where you are and the door is right behind me. So I think the simple solve here is just to put in a little fence, just a little visual barrier that makes it clear, hey, don't walk this way. And I honestly think that I might need to make a little sign that says do not enter or an arrow that says entrance

that way to make it crystal, crystal clear. Have I ever built a fence before? No, not really. So I don't know what I'm doing. I actually don't have much of a vision other than I know I have problems to solve

and we gotta get started. First up was sourcing some flagstone for the path I wanna make. And I thought I would just call around first to see what my options were, but I don't know guys, I was having the worst time trying to explain

what I thought was a very simple ask for flagstone. But then I heard from my mother-in-law who told me that she had a stack of stones sitting in her yard that I could have. We love a free and secondhand score around here. Free from cost though, but not free from struggle because look at the amount of bugs I had to deal with here. These certainly required a good cleanup before going anywhere near my car. I've had to wrestle about like a million mosquitoes and ants and earwigs but

tada!

let's take it home okay

so I don't know if this will be enough to do everything but it certainly will be a good start so we'll see how far we get. I might even want to move some of these, I think these are lilies, out more so that my little patio area here can be wider. Honestly, I can't even call this an intentional patio stone.

This is just a piece of the tiling that we used inside the bedroom. It's time for you to go. Okay I really actually like this a lot. I think they can be spaced even a little bit more apart because I really want the grass to be able to grow back in between all the stones. I'm not trying to do like a fully interlock stone everywhere patio. I really want whatever I do to integrate well with just the wild out here.

However, this is all the stones I have. So we have not made a dent at all in the pathway I'm hoping to construct towards the fence. So we need to just give up on trying to phone places and instead just go out and visit some landscaping supplier maybe? Let's see what we can do.

Look at this! Already! Already! It's so great. I had to go to two different landscaping places to secure more stone. I actually don't know why flagstone seems so hard to source.

I'm back with what I did find and now we get the satisfying task of organizing them all into a pathway. However, this was still not enough stones so that means one final trip back to the stone hearth for me. I'll see you tomorrow. So today's task is to clean up these gardens behind me. They look at a hot mess. You would not believe the variety of things that I was finding in this garden.

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code that's right here on screen. June's Journey is available on iOS and Android mobile devices as well as on PC. Okay, backandelion, this one went on a journey to come over here.

There's like a literal cinder block in here.

Look at this baby little toad!

He's so tiny! Incoming hand for scale.

Look how small!

Adorable.

Okay, he's gonna live under that rock now I guess. Good morning! As probably evident by the state that the garden was in yesterday morning, I don't particularly have a green thumb. Gardening just doesn't come naturally to me. It's not where my interests lie, but I do want my garden to be better. I know that much at least.

And I've seen this trend kind of going around called chaos gardening, which essentially is just tossing wildflower seeds into your yard and seeing what grows. Letting nature do what nature does best. And the idea is that you do this with natural native wildflower species to your area. And the reason this is so great is because the native wildflower seeds should in theory grow pretty easily on their own because they are set up to live in your environment.

I sort of had this thought process the other day go with me that some of these like very beautiful manicured lush gardens that require a ton of upkeep like we're talking pesticides, watering, constant pruning to keep them alive, probably are that difficult to keep alive in your environment because they're not meant to live there. They need a lot of help

because it's not natural for them to grow there. And if they don't naturally grow there, they probably don't have a ton of natural benefits for your ecosystem, right? Am I onto something here? If the flowers can't grow there by themselves without your help, what are they offering for the bees and the birds and all the

other pollinators and animals and wildlife in your zone? They probably don't have much to offer. And so yeah, you might look pretty, but if you don't have anything to offer for me and my local friends, then I don't want you in my garden. I said what I said. I'm gonna go to the garden center. The goal here is to find as many native wildflowers and shrubbery and grasses to my zone and bring them home and plant them in my garden. So let's get to it. Okay, here we go. It's like a pre-packaged wildflower mix. This is exactly what I'm looking

for. All-purpose, bee-friendly. Shady garden. Okay, this is what I need because the side of the house is very shady. Hummingbird garden. Attract attracts hummingbirds. I like hummingbirds. Pollinators attracts bees, butterflies and hummingbirds. Hit them with a triple threat. Let's do let's do two varieties.

Add to cart. Literally.

I do want to find some already started sprouted flowers. So we're not just looking at dirt in the finals of this video.

Dwarf Russian sage. Oh my God, there's a finals of this video. Dwarf Russian Sage.

Oh my God, there's a bee on this already.

Look at this little baby.

Well, that's a good sign.

OK, let's get some of these. I like these.

I like these a lot.

They are beautiful.

Oh my God, there's so many pretty ones.

What are you?

Look at these.

How am I ever, I just want them all. Black-eyed Susans. These ones I know for sure are good native choices because I see them just growing wildly all over the place. I'm just looking at how beautiful it is in here and I just, I want my garden to look like this.

And I think it's possible, I do.

Quite the full haul.

Okay, let's go. So I've got the flowers just loosely placed about the garden, but I haven't actually started planting anything yet because I'm not set on the exact location of everything. Reason for this is today, the fence posts are actually going in. This is a part of the project that we are using outside help with because people that build fences all the time can shred through this process so fast. They're bringing a giant auger tool which will help them dig big holes into the ground which

makes it very easy for them to set the fence posts and pour the necessary concrete. Something we also needed to do which you might not realize if you're doing a fence as well is have someone from the internet come by and tell us where the wires are dug in our garden. They just put little stakes in the ground to notify us of where important things are hidden underneath. So we didn't accidentally hit them when drilling the holes in the ground for the

fence posts. So the fence posts are now in.

We have a nice straight line and this is where the help stops and it's up to us to actually put the fence boards on this after the concrete is fully set. But one thing that happened is that the experts recommended that we put the gate here just based off of everything and the tree instead of I had it going over there. So now I have to move my path. And that's the reason why everything's been started but nothing's been finalized, because I was waiting for this moment.

I had a feeling that the placement of the fence would really affect a lot of things. So now we know what's happening here, we can start making some real final moves.

Let's get to it. With the stones moved to their final spot, I moved on to planting the garden. I'm really just going off of vibes here, because like I said earlier, gardening is not my forte. So I'm just placing things where I think they look nice and also based on their sun or shade requirements. But gardeners out there, please let me know how you go about this process,

because I am sure there is a science to this arrangement strategy of gardening nice and also based on their sun or shade requirements. But gardeners out there, please let me know how you go about this process, because I am sure there is a science to this arrangement strategy of gardens that I do not know. Might have messed up a little bit here. I think I let this one sit in the hot sun too long, unwatered.

She's a little wilty. I'm hoping that we plant her and give her lots of water and she'll come back to life The whole idea of this garden is that it's hardy, right? So I've got these tall guys. These are Mountain mint and I liked them because I feel like they can sort of help cover this pipe situation back here because they're tall mint Mint mint

Mint mint. Mint mint.

Do you see how naturally blue that is? That is beautiful. Like I've never seen the color of a blue jay up this close. Good morning, we are starting the day off at the hardware store to pick up some lumber because it is fence build day. Well, I should say like fence finish day because we are putting the boards on the fence. Now when I tell you that since putting in this flagstone walkway, the amount of unwanted

visitors to the bedroom door has increased. I mean it makes sense, we did make such a clearly obvious path going there. So the fence is of utmost importance right now. It's like when they say sometimes it's gotta get bad before it gets good. We're in the middle of that.

What have we done? Well, let me show you. These are 1x6x8 pressure treated fence boards and since we have the fence posts all perfectly laid and even and straight in the ground, this should be very simple. It's just a matter of screwing these onto the posts. Now I want to do a horizontal board design instead of a vertical. I just feel like that looks slightly more mid-century in design. And again, this should be very easy. And then in the

middle spot there is going to be a gate. I'll tackle that last though because I think that leans into the slightly more difficult area. But again, shouldn't hopefully be too difficult. Now as you can maybe tell, the ground does do a bit of a slope here. It comes down this way. So since I want my fence to be perfectly level at the top, we're going to have an uneven amount of boards at the bottom,

which I'll have to just navigate as we go. This also means that I'm going to have to chop the fence posts heights because they're all at a various height right now to be even. But I'm going to do that last because I think having the boards installed will give me a nice level straight line That'll make chopping them all to the same height much easier

I think I'm gonna start at this side, which is my tallest side and work that way This first board that goes up is going to be the most important one Because everything else is going to be measured Level to it. So I Got to get this nice and straight.

Okay.

Okay. Yes. Now we're in business.

Let's confirm. Beautiful.

So now that the first piece is on and level and looking good I'm using this little spacer piece that's a 2x2. This will make sure that the rest of the boards are evenly spaced all the way down. We are looking so good! All we need to do now is put the gate in. And for that, I picked up a gate kit, which is super handy because it comes with the four brackets you need to make a nice square solid door.

And the brackets actually have the hinges for the door built into them. Building the gate was super easy. I just measured the width of the opening and minused an inch so the gate had some room to swing. I'm using pressure treated two by fours and then screwing those into the gate was super easy. I just measured the width of the opening and minus an inch so the gate had some room to swing. I'm using pressure treated 2x4s and then screwing those into the gate brackets to make the perfect frame. Once we got it hung on the post, the last step was screwing in matching fence boards to the front of the gate for a seamless look.

Today I want to take a little bit of a break from some of the bigger DIY projects and do

something crafty.

It's not a word that I throw around very often. This is probably the craftiest project that I've done in a while. Going to involve very simple ingredients and some acrylic paint. So we've got the fence. The final piece to this puzzle is the sign. So with my extra piece of cedar board, I also picked up this baggie of wooden alphabet letters and we are

gonna make some signage for this gate. I think that I want to do two different signs. One that's on the actual gate part of the fence that says, that's like a do not enter sign basically, and then a separate sign that guides people which way to go. I don't know if I'm really overthinking this, but I just feel like I need to be as clear as possible

in this scenario. I've been going back and forth on what to actually write on these signs because I want it as simple as possible. And do not enter is a bit wordy, go away is a bit mean,

keep out I think is the clearest way to write this, you know, it's not the friendliest but we're also not trying to invite them in. what do we think? is it deterring you? So I think I want to attempt like a drop shadow effect, the legibility and also that means a little retro. Like an orange and a reddy tone for the keep out.

Keep out.

And then a gentler, happier, like a blue or a green for the entry sign. There really is some color theory here I'm sure about what colors evoke certain emotions. I'm undecided if I want to paint the tops of the letter a color or just leave them the natural wood. I think that I will leave this decision for next time so that you have time in the comments to tell me what you think I should do.

But let's go get these hung up anyways just to see how this vase is looking so far. I am so impressed that we already have the starts of a walkway and a full on fence with a working gate. The garden still needs a little bit of help and we do have those wildflowers yet to plant and of course we need outdoor furniture and decor all of which we will tackle in the next episode.

So until then let me end with this reminder to download June's Journey. You can get it for free at that link that's right there in the description or you can scan this very handy QR code that is right here on screen. You can play it on your Android or iOS mobile devices, as well as on your PC. Thanks for joining me guys.

See you next time. See you next time.

Bye.