Our Backyard Design Plans & Inspiration

Hey friends! I'm excited to be sharing some of our backyard plans with you today. If you're on Instagram, you might remember my tour I gave a couple weeks ago and asked if anyone had any suggestions for us! My friend's mom replied, along with my aunt, and I think I have a pretty good plan of what's going where. 
Here's what we've done so far:  + When we moved in, we removed the tree in the middle of the yard because the roots were touching our foundation (scary!) and the span of the tree was covering the entire yard, making grass nearly impossible to grow.  + My husband built a fence the week we moved in last May. + Since the yard was all weeds (though the previous owners, since we bought the house with snow on the ground, told us it was "lovely grass" LOL), we hired someone to grade the yard, throw down top soil and then seed last October. A day or so after he seeded, we got torrential down pour rain like I've never seen and it washed a lot of the seed away. As you'll see in photos below, the grass is really patchy and sad looking.  + As soon as the MI governor said that landscapers could work again, we had our guy come back to reseed and fertilize. This happened a couple days ago. We're hopeful it'll start to fill in!
The Design Plan:
First I thought I'd show you some mock ups of the area. I drew over some photos I took of the space in Instagram Stories, so excuse this poor mock up ;) It will have to do for now!
Our garage makes up one of the walls of "fence" for the yard, and right now it's ugly! Seed likely won't grow right along here because this is where the yard starts to slope down and water pools a bit here. (Thanks for your suggestions on drain systems!) This area, even on a sunny day, gets zero sun, as you can see in the photo. With some suggestions from my friend's mom and my aunt, we decided to get shutters and a window box for under this tiny garage window. It'll help fill out the space and add some charm! We're also going to add trellis' on either side of the window with a vine flower growing up it that does well in shade.
You'll see I drew stepping stones along this area and this is really out of necessity because of the water pooling and no grass growing here, but I also think it'll be so pretty! The stones will go from the gate to the right of this picture below to the garden shed and in between the large pavers we'll spread small crushed river rock to help with the water issues. 

Okay, onto the shed! If you scroll down, you'll see the shed in its current state. A big snooze fest! For some reason the old owner painted our house, garage (even the garage door!!) and the shed the same color. I'm going to liven this baby up by painting it white and then painting the shed doors (which we'll replace) with a pretty light blue. Finishing touches will be pretty new hardware on the doors.

I'm thinking of doing potted plants on either side of the shed doors to bring some more beauty.

For the window box, I'm thinking of going with a stained wood to match our deck stain, which will be to the right of these pictures. I'm still wavering on the color of the shutters, but I'm leaning towards a crisp white to match the shed.

Now for some inspiration photos to show you my vision!
Window Box Inspiration:

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Shutter Inspiration:
 

via - sage

via - white
Trellis / Vine Inspiration:

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This is moonflower! It actually opens its blooms in the evening and night, kind of the opposite of a morning glory! But it's great for shade.

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Shed Inspiration:

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Isn't the crushed rock beautiful up next to the shed? I think it'll give it a really clean, more polished look! 
At first I was dreading this backyard process, but now I'm looking forward to it and glad we have a blank slate. Maybe I'll get into yard design next ;) Just kidding!
Let me know what you think! xoxo


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