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Our Overgrown Flower Bed along the pool

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You guys, our overgrown flower bed along the pool is out of control and I need your help! If  you have been following us for a while, you know that this time last year, we were tackling our swampy pool nightmare. We bought our house in February 2018 and the house had been vacant for a couple years so the pool had not been open for two seasons.

Before we get started though, thank you SO much for all your emails, comments and messages about the new lighting in our house. Huge change right? The before and after is drastic so don’t miss that post. You guys are so sweet!

overgrown flower bed + hosta + ground cover

The previous owner had a waterfall setup with the white pipes but I have decided to cut the pipes and cap them in an effort to keep the pool clean. I spent the better part of last Summer cleaning mulch and debris from the pool so the waterfall is out.

Help with our overgrown flower bed along the pool

overgrown flower bed around inground pool -1

Last year we left this overgrown flower bed as it was and just trimmed the shrubs and tried to manage it as best we could.

The problem is the mulch runs into the pool when rains and the flowering trees dump leaves into the pool!

My goal is to make the flower bed maintenance free but still pretty. I decided to clean out the flower bed and redo the existing flower bed.

overgrown flower bed around inground pool -1

How to attack an overgrown flower garden

If you follow me on Instagram and Facebook, you may have seen the stories I posted while I was cleaning out the overgrown flower bed and trimming the shrubs. If I knew my mom wouldn’t kill me, I would have taken a chainsaw to the entire flower bed and started over. I decided to keep the peace and cut everything back and remove as much of the mulch as I could.

cleaned flower bed, trimmed juniper, mulch removed

It doesn’t look like I did much below in the flower bed but this is the result of 4 hours of trimming the hedges and removing all the old mulch.

pool, cleaned flower bed, trimmed juniper, mulch removed

The problem is, what do I plant here and what do I use instead of mulch?

The picture above is last year with the black tarp over the pool and the overgrown flower bed before we cut it back. Don’t miss the swamp monster pool full of frogs and snakes post. It was a mess!

How to redo an existing flower bed

Many suggested river rock on my Facebook page but I am not sure that is the look I am going for.

I did find this image at hgtv and I like the idea of larger rocks and flowering ground cover in between.

river rock and big rock garden with flowering ground covers

Many of you also suggested flowering ground cover but some of you said the ground cover will take over the flower bed and be a impossible to maintain. Honestly, it would just be a matter of cutting the ground cover back each year right?

I like the idea of Hosta too as shown at Fine Gardening. It’s green and would fill in the big spaces without dropping leaves in the pool.

hosta flower bed with purple flowers

I would love your ideas on what to do with our overgrown flower bed so please either leave a comment below or send me an email.

This past week during April vacation, we worked like crazy people in the yard restoring the flower beds, dethatching the lawn and cleaning up from the winter. Did you see my dad’s lawn dethatching tips post?

how to dethatch a lawn with a mower attachment

We are opening the pool the third week of May this year and hopefully all the TLC last year, will pay off this year.  We ended up replacing the pool filter last year and plan to replace a few more components this year in order to get it running more efficiently. Stay tuned we have a pool series that will start in a couple weeks and run for the entire summer. I am looking forward to your comments and emails about our overgrown flower bed along the pool.

Meet Jessica

What started as a hobby, Jessica’s blog now has millions of people visit yearly and while many of the projects and posts look and sound perfect, life hasn’t always been easy. Read Jessica’s story and how overcoming death, divorce and dementia was one of her biggest life lessons to date.

6 Comments

  1. I like the idea of large stone pieces and some form of ground flowering cover. Whatever you do will be beautiful as is everything you tackle

  2. I would decrease the slope of the bed and increase the height of the walk near the pool to limit debris entering the pool. Then what you put in the bed wouldn’t be as much a problem.

    1. Oh that is a good idea about decreasing the slope!!! I think we may just do that! 🙂 Hoping to find more flat stone too so we can raise the height as well.

    2. Mary Rickrich says:

      My thoughts exactly!

  3. Hi, I’m late on reading this post and maybe you have found a solution to your flower bed/pool problem.

    Looks as if the flower bed is raised or the ground is mounded up and possibly causing the mulch in the past to blow into your pool. Also looks as if there isn’t much space between the pool and the flower bed. Don’t know if that is the case and if you would consider a cement path or pavers along the pool/along the flower bed to help keep the mulch where it should be, in the flower bed. I am not a fan of ground cover because I do feel as though it is hard to weed and I like a neat flower bed.

    You have done an amazing amount of work and I’m sure whatever you end up doing will look great.

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