Front yard beds

The past 2 days I've worked on some improvements I've been wanting to get to for quite some time - since we delayed the deck we're going to build in the backyard, I opted to get these knocked out first.

(VERY OLD IMAGE - posted here for perspective) This image was taken from the net, long before we looked into possible purchase (a ton of renovation has been done since). The smaller tree clump to the left is the current location of the shade garden (and the tree is double in size now). The larger tree to the right is gone (lightening strike) and that is the current location of the small sun garden.

Shade garden - 42 landscaping blocks + soil w/ peat & manure + irrigation extension. The tree was preexisting and I have been looking for a way to "clean it up" some. 

Sun garden - 20 landscaping blocks + soil w/ peat & manure. This spot covers a preexisting tree stump that the property owners left us after removing a lightening struck tree (stump runs very close to the water lines on the house so I was hesitant to have it removed). The down side is that this spot requires manual irrigation, unless we add another extension. It's a small spot though so that shouldn't be a huge issue overall.