Ivy problem before and after & neighbor problems follow-up :DIY Home Decor

You may all remember that I recently shared a post about our garden and the ivy problems we have. I also sat down with Dr. Therese Mascardo from Research therapy to discuss common neighbor problems, she gave some great advice on how to solve them. (Check out this post, which includes a video of our conversation here to be updated.) Today I wanted to share a follow-up with you!

Disclosure: This post is sponsored by Troy-Bilt. All opinions are my own.

First of all a big thank you Troy-Bilt for facilitating the conversation between Dr. Therese and me. She had some really good tips on how to deal with common problems like dogs barking at all times, people mowing the lawn at dawn, and then our particular problem with ivy rooted in and in a neighbor’s yard ours is spilled. First of all, let me just say that we are also guilty. In our garden, ivy poured into another neighbor’s garden, so we worked on it. We ended the first phase of ivy removal, which was the back corner of our yard. It was by far the most serious problem area. (We plan to do the rest of the courtyard later because it’s a multi-phase venture.) This is how it looked before.

And here it is now.

This fence was completely covered with ivy before! It’s so nice to actually see it now.

There is still a lot to do, but we have made great strides. First we cleared the ivy by hand and with a machete and a rake.

Then we used that awesome Hacker shredder by Troy-Bilt to turn sticks and twigs into wood chips for a certain floor covering.

This thing is awesome! It is easy to use and does the job quickly. We couldn’t round up enough wood to cover the entire area, but we covered as much as possible and then added a top layer of pine straw. We hope that these layers help to suppress ivy growth. It also looks a lot better than just a bunch of dirt! There is not enough sun to grow grass in this corner, so this was our solution.

Now to the neighbors, funny story! I had planned to introduce ourselves and establish a first relationship with them so that we could discuss the ivy later. In the meantime, they started to deal with it themselves without us saying anything! (Maybe you saw my blog post? Hmmm. Haha) Anyway, with Covid it was difficult to interact with neighbors and I didn’t see many people on the way. If things improve a bit, I still plan to connect with them. Only when future problems arise will we have a relationship.

As for the other area of ​​the courtyard, where ivy from church ownership penetrates, we have decided not to concern ourselves with the church, since there is only so much ground covered on its side of the fence and it is such a large area that it probably is not so, it is not feasible for them to maintain it. It is basically the forest. We have just looked at our side of the fence and will do our best to take care of it so that it does not spread further in our garden.

I can’t say enough good things about Dr. Say Therese and her advice. Make sure you connect to it Instagram if you haven’t already And if you’re going to start any gardening projects soon, be sure to check out Troy-Bilt’s fantastic equipment.

Thanks for the visit!

-Erin