Full Garden Bed Overhaul with Boulders and New Plantings in Kalamazoo

This bed was a mess before we touched it. Overgrown weeds, no structure, nothing working together. We pulled everything out and started from scratch - which is exactly what it needed.

Once the old growth was out, we laid landscape fabric and built the bones of the bed using boulders. We used them to create tiered walls that separate the rock section from the mulch section. That separation is doing two things at once - it keeps the materials clean and defined, and it adds real visual depth to a bed that was previously flat and chaotic. The rock zone sits tight to the house foundation, and the mulch zone fans out toward the paver driveway.

The plant list on this one was detailed and intentional. A Japanese Maple anchors the center of the main bed. Boxwoods line up under each window - three per side, kept symmetrical. Then we layered in Summer Sweet Pepper Bush, Burning Bush, and Elderberry on the boulder tiers for height and fall interest. Along the lower sections, Firepower Nandina and Candycorn Spirea run in rows on opposite sides of the bed. Coral Bells, Indian Pink, Hellebores, and Heartleaf Foamflower fill in the ground-level spaces along the pathway - that's a lot of variety working together in one bed without it feeling overdone.

Every plant choice here had a purpose. Some are there for color, some for texture, some because they handle partial shade well - which matters on a wooded lot like this one in Kalamazoo. The boulder walls do the heavy lifting structurally, and the plants fill in the character. Give this bed a full growing season and it's going to look completely different.

The crew on this job put in real work. Ripping out an overgrown bed, hauling boulders, laying fabric, spreading rock and mulch, and planting dozens of individual plants is a full day of physical work - and these four got it done. Proud of how this one came together.