This is the vacant lot we set our goals for in the fall of 2010.
Front yard just after we put the sod down.
Plenty of visits from our friends of the woods. We have seen just about everything out here from the deer, rabbits, fox, squirrels, owls, doves, tweety birds, upland game birds, owls and only one of my favorites-a damn snake of the unfavorable kind.
Which resulted in this!
The scrub oak is actually very hardy and nice FREE trees that are easily cleaned up.
Barb and I spent most of 2011 planning the rest of the back yard and keeping the weeds out.
The beginning of the ZEN garden and some of the plants we chose that require little water and little maintenance.
More plants and the drip irrigation that we installed before the rest of the landscaping.
Barb carpeted the whole area with landscape fabric to keep the weeds down. We bought two molds and 60 80 lb. bags of concrete mix. It took us most of the summer to mix the cement and make the 110' of stone paths.
The vinyl planter boxes are something we found at the local home and garden show and work great for raised planter boxes so we can grow some veges and herbs.
We decided to design our own Bubble Rock water feature for the ZEN Garden. The big rock actually came from the hole when they dug the foundation. It had a perfect area to provide the water pool for the bubble effect and was pretty flat on the bottom. We rented a rotary hammer drill and drilled a 3/4" hole through the rock. The rest of the rocks came from the hole as we dug it. The hole is approximately 4' x 4' and about 24" deep.
We bought the pond liner and other components from Lowe's and made the support for the rock from these cement blocks.
Hmmmm? How would the Egyptians get a 300 lb rock from A to B without dropping it in the hole C. Answer, utilize some wood products and a full barage of swear words.
Add an 18" perferated ABC pipe, some tubing, pump, water and electricity.
Bubbling Bubble Rock with some of the rock balast.
Finished.
Our Bridge over the River Rock. The dude that put our irrigation in for us when they hard scaped the lot put the valve boxes smack dab in the middle of where the path needed to go. We fixed that problem by building a bridge completely out of TREX. We covered the whole area with a 1" crushed rock called Raisen Grey-7 yards (thanks Tyson, Zack and Kirsten for helping us haul and spread it out.
We added some low voltage lighting to give it some ambience at night.
We spent a lot of time with paper and ruler planning out how everything would fit. I have no idea how much time Barb spent researching plants and shrubs finding varities that would work with different lighting, be drought and deer resistant and work with everything else for both the front and back yards.
Our next project will be in 70 degree weather, no mud and no broiling sunshine. And we won't have to dig out any rocks. :-)
Back to the paper, ruler and lot's of planning.
