Rock'n Garden

I had no idea I was going to be away from my blog for so long, this spring and summer have been full of events, projects and entertaining almost non-stop, keeping me pretty tied up and unable to write about all the fun we are having. I can’t remember when we have been so busy at this time of the year. Because I was gone so long I thought I should start sharing some of the projects we have been working on. 

This weekend’s project was in the backyard re-working some of the existing landscaping.  The yard was once a real showcase with lots of expensive designer landscaping all around the whole yard, because it was empty for over a year just about every area suffered neglect. Space by space we have been re-working and re-using as many of the existing plants and landscaping materials as possible.  There were a ton of river rocks all over, which had once been artfully placed to show off each specific area, little by little we dug up the rocks and repositioned them so they could be seen instead of being buried in mud and debris.  After two years of backbreaking labor we just had one area left to complete.  It was the area hit hardest with flooding whenever it rained and the gutter ran too fast, the water backed up into the lawn and the garage.  The soil in the rock beds had built up with sediment and leaves over time, creating a back up not allowing the water to drain, which meant it was a big project, it went to the bottom of the list until we had the time to fix it properly.  It was time to complete the landscape and eliminate the flooding; we are having the baby shower in two weeks and we want to have the party outside on the patio, weather permitting.

Stage 1: Work in progress

After:

For some strange reason the rocks had been originally placed up by the plants with a huge open area of dirt between the bender board and the green plants. We thought maybe there had once been rocks there but had no way of knowing so we did some digging and found quite a bit of rock under the mud.  We dug them out and washed each of them off then re-positioned them next to the bender board forming a nice little river rock boundary for the water to run over during the rains.  Once we had the rock in place we finished up by adding Scott’s Nature Scape in Sierra Red, very pretty creating a nice contrast with the red up against the rocks and all the greenery.

This was the area which created the build up of soil, leaves and eventually excess water when it rained.  We had to do a lot of digging to find the rocks under the sediment which we removed by digging out the extra soil and rocks then putting each stone back one by one.

Everything is back in place, all the rocks were cleaned up as well as the planting beds which got more of the Sierra Red bark to add contrast and cut down on weeds.  This project took seven hours of tedious, backbreaking work over a two day stretch to complete.  My husband and I were thrilled to be done and very happy with the final results, I don’t think we will be doing anymore bending over or digging in the next few weeks or until our backs recover. Our landscaping projects are complete, at least for this year; next up is my patio makeover which I hope to get finished by the baby shower, fingers crossed.

Thanks for letting me share our Rock’n Garden with you; I hope you enjoyed the last of the landscaping projects for this year, next spring we hope to be refinishing the patio pergola and moving onto some larger backyard projects.  I am not sure what else I will be sharing with you since the baby shower is coming up in a couple of weeks, I hope to have time to show you some of the projects we are working on for that, including some yummy snacks for the ladies.

See you soon,

Laurette

You might also like:

Time For Lime

The Red Door

Mailbox Makeover

Rose Rescue

Spring Shed