The Final Frontier

Well actually not quite the final, and not exactly a frontier - it's our front yard. It certainly was our most major undertaking with the landscaping of Our Next House, and once we got cracking we got a hell of a lot of it completed very quickly.

We moved into our Next House in February of 2009. It took us until just before Christmas of the same year to get to the point where we were ready to start turning the front yard into something other than a mud pit. This was mainly because had piles of dirt and sand stored there that we had to get rid of first.

And then, true to style, we decided to set ourselves an unrealistic (but potentially almost possible) goal of getting the front yard looking pretty by Christmas. We were a few weeks out at that point.

So, hi ho, hi ho, as they say. First step was the not very satisfying but very important step of drainage. So we levelled the yard (shovel by shovel), and then laid the ag pipe.

The next step was to cover the pipe with drainage gravel. The issue we had was that there really wasn’t very much height difference from ground level at the front of the yard to the stormwater drain hookup at the bottom end. Therefore we had to try to get as much fall in the drainage as possible, so the yard would in fact drain.

We then brought four (or so) loads of dirt in over the top of the drainage, to try to give our new plants the best chance, and then I had some fun positioning all of the plants I’d gradually accumulated from the markets.

And then we planted most of the plants and mulched the garden.

Then it was time to move on to the other side. Again, we had to spend a fair bit of energy simply getting rid of the remaining dirt and rubble before we could start making it pretty.

Then we brought in more nice dirt (the sheet is to prevent the dirt going all over our pristine white pavers.

Tom showing his shovelling prowess.

Allie having a chat with the house mascot.

More drainage, this time under the media room window.

There were quite a few late nights getting this garden happening.

And then I needed to re-plan the little paved area we were putting in front of the media room. My initial plan wasn’t quite going to work, so Tom and I spent HOURS with graph paper and pencils working out possible options so we could centre the pattern and still have relatively consistent gaps between the pavers. This is the design that won out.

 

And then we filled in the gaps with white pebbles. I had really wanted to put some kind of greenery in the gaps between the pavers, but Tom wasn’t too keen on having to put dirt in amongst the roadbase and sand that gave the pavers a solid base, so we settled for pebbles. Perhaps a less dramatic look than the contrast of green and white would have been, but certainly not bad.

Then we could almost lay a few stepping stones to meet up with the path running along the north side of the house (along Our First Retaining Wall next to Our First Garden).

 

Looking up the North side of the house.

Looking across towards The Roundabout.

Another late night, this time mulching around the new plants.

The fully mulched garden. You can hardly even see the plants with all the mulch around them!

The stepping stones.

We bought a cheap metal archway to divide the front yard from the North side, and planted Chinese Star Jasmine to grow up each side.

The media room window.

And here is the garden a year or so later when we moved out.

The beautiful big Westringea Coast Rosemaries.

The view from The Roundabout.

Just in case you were wondering, we didn’t actually get the whole garden done by Christmas. We still had most of the media room side barren when Christmas Day hit. Nevertheless, we accomplished a lot more with that goal to work to than we would have otherwise. And then we spent our Christmas holidays getting the rest of the yard done. No rest for the wicked!