Garden tour, part 3

Crocuses!

Now that I've lured you in with flowers, lets finish up this garden tour! In part 1, we walked down the north side of the yard and in part 2, up the south side.

I've been playing around with maps, starting with a 2015 satellite photo. I want to find a better editing tool, the one that I have doesn't draw curves, but this will give you an idea of the shape of the yard and location of everything. I like seeing all of the areas that I've been working on but it's a little scary how much lawn is still left. 

I've talked about the two railroad tie retaining walls that we're hoping to replace this year, and more work to do on the shadier side of the hillside. I need to look at paths too and not quite sure what to do for those. I've left grass in the paths for now, but don't want to deal with mowing most of them - and keeping grass in paths from spreading into the beds would be an ongoing headache.

In the front side yard, I re-used bricks that were lying around. They're not my favorite, not a look I want to repeat elsewhere, but they're functional. This path could stay grass, it's easy enough to cut with the electric trimmer.

Path along the south side of the garage

In the woodland garden, I'm considering stepping stones with groundcover plants. I made a few concrete stepping stones with stained glass in the fall before it got too cold and wet. But it would take a lot of stepping stones to fill in these paths.

Paths in the woodland garden, looking west

Paths in the woodland garden, looking south

Paths in the woodland garden, looking west

The bottom hillside is complicated by being very steep. I had put in stepping stones on the sunny side, and could continue that across the top of the shadier side. 

Stepping stones across the sunny hillside

Path across across the shadier side of the hillside

Stepping stones are also adequate for walking up and down the sunny side of the hillside to pick raspberries, but I need to be able to haul a wheelbarrow up the shadier side. I just don't know what to make a path out of that isn't steps and won't slide on the steep slope. 

Stepping stones along the raspberries

Paths down and across the shadier side of the hillside

So I'm still thinking about the paths, let me know if you have any ideas. I hope you enjoyed seeing a more complete view of my yard, this has certainly helped me clarify what I have to work on this year!