Step 1: Concreting. Tom got to work concreting the little area at the bottom of the driveway where we planned to store our rubbish bins (after installing a drain).
We remembered just in time that we wanted to extend our sprinkler system across from the other side of the front yard, so we ran it through the black drain at the bottom of the driveway, and that's the pipe curled up on the concrete there.
Those steel poles sticking out of the concrete were part of my grand plan to eventually have a Chinese Star Jasmine vine growing around that little concreted area to completely disguise the rubbish bins. To help this process along, we drilled some holes in the posts at carefully spaced intervals (also being careful to paint the holes with some rust-proof paint), then we ran some wire through the holes so we had some horizontal rungs (for want of a better word) that the vine could grow over and climb up.
Step 2: More concreting. Building a baby retaining wall out of leftover concrete blocks to follow the curve of the driveway, to allow the garden to be fairly level instead of falling at the same rate of the driveway. The added advantage of doing this? Partially covering up the rubbish bins. You'll note that we left a bit of space between the driveway and the wall, because we decided that the driveway needed a little bit of extra width so we didn't crash into the wall reversing out every day.
Step 3: More digging. Like we hadn't had enough already.
Allie kept an eye on proceedings, as always.
The process of digging away all of the bad dirt from this area was especially awful, because it had been our main dumping ground for all sorts of not-good-for-plants items like broken bricks and the like up until this point.
Not only that, but for a reason we couldn't understand, we kept coming across random bits of heshen-y, felt-y sort of material and rocks upon rocks upon rocks. We couldn't figure it out until we remembered this:
Where we were digging what was to become my beautiful curvy garden, had been our old driveway (since buried under mounds of yukky dirt). So the builders had obviously not only dumped a whole bunch of rocks there to make the driveway easier to use, but first laid down a piece of material that then had to be torn away bit by bit as we tried to dig up the dirt and rocks. Not fun. I wish I had more pictures.
But as usual, with a bit of determination we got there, and could move onto the next stage.
Step 4: Putting nice dirt and plants in!
We also made sure we put a bit of drainge behind the retaining wall so it doesn't have water problems later.
My nicely laid out plants.
The view from the front.
Step 5: The Letterbox. Later, we finally upgraded the letterbox from the temporary one we bought from a demolition yard for $10 (since Tom destroyed the original letterbox when we were demolishing Our First House), and forked out the dough for a sparkly new one. Here it is just after being concreted in, with our hastily scavenged supports to prevent it from slipping while the concrete set.
Step 6: Finishing the wall. Later again (it's a bit shameful how long the wall sat there unfinished), we painted the wall in the same render paint that we painted the back Slow Retaining Wall in, and capped the top with all our leftover driveway pavers that had been sitting around, cut to follow the curve of the wall. And in line with the way these things always seemed to work out, we had JUST enough pavers to completely cover the wall, with only one leftover. You can actually see them all lined up on top of the El Cheapo Retaining Wall in one of the earlier photos if you scroll up.
And here it is from the front again. Please ignore the stray waterbottle. It's protecting the top of a star picket that still needs to be hammered completely into the ground (it's holding that purple sleeper along the front in place).
And that completes the landscaping of our Next House! Click here to see the entire house in its finished state.
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