The Front Yard: Going Native
Home Rooms:Front Yard Jobs: Landscaping
This page describes both the front and side yards. This includes creating a garden using California native plants, rebuilding our fence, and laying down a brick path...
The photo above shows our pretty redwood fence and part of our garden. It didn't always look this way, though. Move your mouse over the photo to see a before shot. The fence used to have a couple of unmatched boards, lattice that was falling apart, and in some areas the fence was leaning precariously into our yard! Mountains of ivy were growing on it and many of the posts were rotted out. In addition, our yard was the convenient storage place for demoliltion debris. Yes, our yard definitely needed some work.
Wayne started with taking apart the old fence, digging out rotted posts, and resetting new posts made from rot-resistent pressure-treated or cedar wood. He reused some of the old redwood boards for the side fence, but used all new redwood for the front fence. He also added a new cleaner-looking lattice. Take a look at more fence photos. We were now ready to tackle the garden.
In August 2005, Wayne and his gardening-extraordinaire sister, Carol, went about transforming our decrepit front yard into a wonderful flowering patch of plants native to Northern California. Carol did all the planning, including creating a groovy simulation of what our yard will look like after all the plants have reached full growth. Before she flew in from the East Coast, Wayne and I cleared out the junk from the front yard and transplanted a small lemon tree (which took a lot more effort than we anticipated, and we broke our shovel!). When Carol arrived, they trimmed down the yucca tree, planted the plants, and put a thick layer of mulch all around. Here are photos of some of the individual plants.
Side Yard Path
When Wayne was fixing the fence, the old posts' concrete footings had to be jackhammered out. While the jackhammer was on hand, he figured he might as well also demolish the wavy, broken concrete path in our side yard. Then, around October 2005, he and a friend finished the side yard demolition by removing dirt so that the ground sloped away from the house. (It is bad for a yard to slope towards the house because this would keep water against the house and encourage rot and insect infestations.)
Laying a brick path is a lot of work! If you simply lay the bricks down on the ground, after a few years the ground will naturally shift and make the path all rolly-polly and weeds would be able to grow between the bricks. We used bricks left over from taking down our chimney. This provided nice old bricks that have some variation and personality. It produces a less polished look, but that's suits us fine.
What We Did: Laying a brick path
- Used stakes and strings to create a mock-up of the width and length of the path and dug a trench within the stringlines that was seven inches deep.
- Installed metal edging to keep the edges straight and act as a guide for the finished height of the path.
- Laid down landscaping fabric to deter weed growth and separate the original ground from the layers we added next.
- Added a 4" layer of gravel, which acts as a more solid base than the surrounding dirt, and tamped it. This means applying pressure (essentially, pounding it) to pack the gravel tightly.
- Poured 1" of sand on top of the gravel to make a smooth, level base on which to lay the brick.
- Created a "screed," a straight-edged tool used to create an even, flat surface. Ours was about the depth of a brick, since we used the metal edging installed earlier as a guide for our screed. Pulling a screed across the guides easily gets rid of excess sand.
- Laid down the bricks. We chose a herring bone pattern.
- Applied more sand to help fill voids in the path.
- Moistened the sand to help "cement" it all.
- Took a victory lap down the path to celebrate getting it done!
Here's the finished product. Ain't it a beaut?
