Before: From Ugly to Beauty - Front Yard Landscaping

This is the area next to our front porch. It's completely bare and ugly.

 The previous owners had it almost exactly like this. We've already put some top soil there and now we're leveling it with the sidewalk to lay pavers. (This may be a later summer project since the front yard is shady all evening.) We plan to BBQ here until our backyard trees start shading us in the summer.

This is a side view of the front lawn:

It wasn't watered all summer. Also the grass or sod is directly on top of sandy soil. As you can imagine, it's not in good condition. You can see we are already trying to level out and improve areas of the lawn with top soil. We also bought some iron and we'll see how it does this summer with some weeding and watering.

 This area is in front of our side-facing garage; next to the porch:

 Three bushes were already there. We added the Karl Forester grass (the yellow one in the middle). We also put down cardboard for weed block and rubber mulch on top. It's starting to look great! I plan to put Russian Sage on each side of the Karl Forester grass. I think the purple plant will look great against the rock border.