We began our garden adventure in April 2018 by tearing up the back yard, and attempting, not at all successfully, to remove all of the weeds that made up the yard.
Spring 2018 Destruction and Building
Tom removing the weeds on his rented mini-loader. Fun!
The yard looks like a meteor hit! Nixie is the only survivor!
Upheaval
The original ferns don’t look too good
Pretty, right?
Tom rolling out the edger to define the edge of the new path
Jerry rolling in possible poo
The path!
Three roses survived the destruction of the yard
The path to what we’ve affectionately been calling The Hellscape
One of the vegetable raised beds, purchased from Amazon and lined with this ridiculous black landscape fabric which began to tear off almost immediately
Spring 2018 First Plants
Grass seed is down, the path is complete, and we have our first plants set out!
Another view of the bare yard with the first plants laid out
The new dogwood!
The first plantings
We planted yarrows underneath the big climbing rose
More baby plants
We added a couple of new roses to go with the ones we inherited
Willie looks at the first plants in The Hellscape. Lol, no he doesn’t since he’s blind!
The Eco-Lawn, a mix of fescues that creates a lush rolling lawn which needs no fertilizer and very little water, starts to come in
The wildflower garden is sprouting!
Willie is enjoying the new sprouts from the Eco-Lawn. Unfortunately, for every new grass sprout came three new weeds, so this first year was a battle to the death between me and the weeds. See all those tiny broad leaf weeds? They are groundsels, the bane of my existence. Who knew I would grow to hate them so much?
Not a great look with the big chain link fence and the rpod in the back. Must fix!
The first plants in the herb and vegetable gardens
The Hellscape is shaping up
What we are optimistically calling The Rose Garden
The Woodland Shade Garden
Closeup of some of the shady plants including heucheras, penstemons, grasses, ferns, and columbines
I often get new ideas for plants I want in the garden from seeing what plants our neighbors have in their front yards. We will take a picture of the plant and then I’ll try to identify it. This picture represents my first attempt at doing so. In the above collage, the photos on the right represent what the plant I wanted looks like: white, yarrow-like flowers on tall lacy stems. I took pictures to our local nursery, and the plant on the left is what I came home with. It’s a viburnum, and while it does have white yarrow-like flowers, as you can see in the inset picture on top, it is also a shrub that grows to 15 feet! And I bought two of these monsters! I think now that what I saw was Queen Anne’s lace or cow parsnip or some kind of carrot. But I got a massive bush instead!
Margo DeMello 
Love your choice of grasses!