The Liriope Massacre of 2011

Ding-dong the witch is dead! And by witch I mean liriope. And by dead I mean dug up. Out it went!

Sure it looks pretty, with its dainty purple flowers in the summer and deep blackish berries in the fall. It's even sold as "ornamental" grass at nurseries. But it apparently likes our yard a little too much and had taken over. It crowded out all our plants and spread well beyond its borders.

So we decided to take action! We started clearing it out every chance we could and then recruited my parents, who actually like gardening and know what to do, to spend a long weekend with us to revamp our front yard.

It came up  a little like sod, but heavy and deep-rooted.

In just a few hours, we created so much waste that the public works people who pick it up left us a note in our door yelling at us that we made the buckets too heavy!

So after that scolding, we decided to start piling it in our driveway and leave out more reasonable amounts every week. We also managed to pawn some off on our neighbors, who actually wanted to plant this evil, vile weed!

After three days of intense labor (plus a few days extra beforehand to start the clearing process), here's what we were left with. Prepare yourself--the change is pretty dramatic:

Here's the first before and after:

In addition to ridding ourselves of the liriope (I'm sure we'll have some poking up in the spring that we missed), we planted bulbs, mums, Magic Carpet Spirea, Red Weigela, May Night Salvia, edged the garden with hostas and an actual border. We pulled out an old azalea, replaced it with a camellia from another part of our yard, and pruned back and trimmed leaves where necessary. We shrank the garden edge a little (back to where it probably was pre-liriope) and planted grass seed.

On the other side of the house:

Again massive quantities of liriope removed. Then we completely reshaped the border, pulled out a lot of pathetic-looking azaleas, a shrub, and a camellia, and pruned up the rest. We added hostas and May Night Salvia along the edge. We left a space near our stoop for some spring planting, when our Spirea Vanhoutti arrives.

Moving on to the front beds now. We dug up yet more liriope, pruned our little "tree-shaped" shrub, cleaned out the random ivy and grass to the right of the tree and divided and spread out the hostas.

We put in mums, some bulbs, and Verbena, which should spread out and give us good ground cover (right now they look pretty pathetic):

On the other side of our walkway, we didn't have to remove grass but we did need to give it some nutrients (in the form of compost and a little rototilling) and a trim. We put some more Verbena, mums, and bulbs there as well.

More than three days and massive amounts of work, but the grass is gone and, with luck, some pretty (and non-invasive) plants should take its place. And we got a good workout in the bargain--all those calories burned just in time for the Halloween candy!