Summer Landscaping, Part One

One of this summer's projects, the dominant project in fact, has been transforming my nice little haven in the woods into something more welcoming.    Here I present a little catch-up post showing progress so far. Some of these photos have already been posted elsewhere, so if this is a duplication, your patience is requested.

 

The overgrown front yard was really getting to me.  Granted some gardening work would have helped, and I was woefully behind, but more serious landscaping labors were also called for. Here is the before photo, dragged up from last year.  It actually looked even worse than this before work began.

 

It seemed to me that the house reflected my own inner chaos, and although I was pulling myself together, I couldn't get any further until my physical space was in order.

 

A sure sign that help was needed was that everything looked better almost immediately after cleanup, before any new work was done and it was all just clay.  I figure it was very telling that the front door was actually more easily accessible when there was no walkway, just packed clay, than it had been with the original walkway of slate set in clay, the walkway that came with the house.

Well, the packed clay was easier to walk on until it rained, that is.   Luckily for my construction projects, it rained little this summer, at least until last week, by which time the front walk was long since finished.

 

Here is the new bluestone walk, and the completion of phase one of the project, although as you can see work is still being done.  You've actually seen  the new front porch in the last couple of garment pics I have posted.

 

Of course, like any remodeling project, once you fix one thing, you see how bad everything else is around it.

 

I realized that I couldn't fix the plantings until I fixed the walls and did the rest of the hoped-for hard-scaping.  So we entered phase II, which is still in process, although in the middle of a brief interruption of work until mid-September.

After the walk, the mason started working on the north end of the house (the front walk is near the South).   One approaches the house coming down a hill on the north side.  The first thing one was faced was a pile of dirt and rocks with a fence to the pool enclosure behind it, but no landscaping or path leading to the pool gate.

 

This photo is the only one I have of the before scenario. Truthfully I avoided thinking about the area, or photographing it.

 

This next photo is taken from the driveway and shows the view one has of the north side of the house as you drive down my driveway.  The area now contained inside the stone bed is the area with the half buried tank shown in the first photo, and the front wall of the stone bed is the same location as the picket fence on the left side of the first photo.  The top of the stone wall is level with the bottom of the lattice fence behind it.

 

This wall is not complete, and eventually the bed contained within will be filled and planted, and there will be a gravel path and then a series of raised beds going up to the deck and the area in front of that stone wall will be cleaned up and filled with packed gravel leading up to the walkway and planting areas.  There will be no plantings in this area as it is also my primary winter snow repository.

 

Later in the week I will show how phase II is shaping up in the front yard, around that new front walkway.

Comments

[Bonnie]

Looks wonderful!

[Mardel]

Metscan, I dont think the job will be completely finished for a while as I want to chose and plant much of the growing things myself, it is something I find enjoyable.  But all the paving and walls will be done this fall, and some of the planting.  The plan will be more visible with the next post, but the mason is away for another three weeks so no immediate progress.

[Mette Melin]

The new pathway to your front door looks really, really nice and safe. I´ll have to wait and see part two, as I can not get a perfect before/after view in my mind : )!m