Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Exterior Home and Garden Plan. Part 1

I guess it just never ends.  There is always something that needs to be done when you own your home.  Trends change, tastes change, and so does your home.  But in our case, we have had a drainage problem for years.  We didn’t realize how bad it really was until we were ready to repaint and had to replace a substantial amount of siding on the house.  So that is finished.  The house is painted.  And now it’s time to solve the drainage problem.  Hubby said “French drains” I said “dry creek bed”…..who do you think won?  Yep…..you got it!  ME!

My inspiration…Pinterest (of course)

My GARDEN board has over 350 pins of gorgeous garden ideas.  Among those I choose three for inspiration.

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I thought this looked very nice.  Neat and clean and would help with drainage.  But I needed something more extensive.

Then I found these pictures.

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This looks beautiful!  The entire garden is gorgeous.

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This is another picture from the same property.  Who wouldn’t love this garden gate!  This is also part of the dry creek bed.  The last two pictures came from Finegardening.com if you are interested in reading the article.  It was very interesting and informative and has more before/during/after pictures.

Of course, I can’t afford a professional to design something this amazing.  But I AM lucky enough to have a LOT of Colorado river rock.  And decorative rock that we removed from my Mother’s house before we sold the property and……most importantly……a hubby with a STRONG back.

So…..we began by determining where our main drainage problem was and digging a shallow trench to lay out our creek bed.  After much debate, we decided not to use lining.  I’ll let your know later this year if that was a wise decision.  I sure hope so!

Next we edged the entire length of the creek bed with our larger rock on each side.  Then filled in with the smaller rock.  Sounds easy enough……until you start hauling all….of…..that…..heavy…..rock……  

It was a big project.  But worth it!

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Here’s our end result!  This is looking to the right as you walk toward our front door.  

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Here it is from the other direction.  We did have to move one one shrub but were able to replant it some place else. 

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And here is the end of the creek bed .  Hopefully this will also help contain those day lilies that you see.  I love them, but they can be a bit invasive.

I LOVE the way that this project turned out!   Hopefully we can reestablish our lawn in front of this bed.  We lost a lot of our lawn here last summer due to the drought.

Tomorrow I am off to shop for ground cover for this flower bed.  The creek bed looks fantastic but we do need plantings to soften the look of the rock and give the area a more natural look.

Have a happy rest of the week!

Denise

3 comments:

  1. Oh.. I love how it looks! What a great job. I think it would be great to be greeted by this rock stream when I came home each day. Can't wait to see with plantings added although it looks good to me as is.

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  2. Wow! That wasn't an easy task...but, I just love the result! Hopefully you'll be watering less, too :)

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  3. Great reveal!! I'm so glad you guys went with your idea. ;) It looks charming.

    XOXO,
    Meredith

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