Garden: Catching You Up on the Patio Project--Before, During, & at Present

This is "before."  Before we bought the house or moved in.  Before our little monkey-boy made an early entrance and started co-opting all our time.  And before we attacked the back yard with saws, sledge hammers, and you name it.  Bare, but at least clean, this was the best the back yard ever looked. 

Back yard "before".

This photo is especially kind to the cracked and listing retaining wall which was patched at the far end with random rocks and extended on the near end with small landscape blocks.  The photo doesn't allow for a tactile appreciation of the mounds of pea gravel that were used to "camouflage" swampy patches.  And the sod (poorly suited to swamp and shade and most likely installed right on top of the existing weeds) was giving up the fight even before we moved in.  So, yes...sad as it is, THIS was the best it ever looked. 

After a while, it looked like this--cracked, weedy, and covered with detritus from previous construction projects.  

(The monkey-boy is not detritus although he might be considered a construction project.)

For a time, I tried to cover-up the patio's inadequacies with floral exuberance...

...But, mostly, I just waited until I'd formalized my plans, researched building codes and best practices, and gotten my head around each phase of the upcoming project.  It was a BIG project--one that would involve a lot of demolition, paving, and building a retaining wall.  Many might wonder why I did not call in the professionals. And, actually, I never seriously considered it.  First and foremost, I am a dyed-in-the-wool DIY-er.  And I knew exactly the look I wanted and it was not a usual type of look.  I'd collected estimates for various portions of the project, and I knew I'd have to pay A LOT--if I could even get someone to do what I wanted--and "A LOT" wasn't in the budget.  This was definitely going to be a DIY project.  

I have a fair amount of experience with DIY and I budgeted about 480 man-hours for this job--2 people X 10 hours per person, per day X 12 weekends.  Of course, there were many portions of the job that I'd never attempted before.  Some parts of the project went quickly and some parts were much more difficult and took longer than projected.  However,  I think the rough estimate came pretty close to reality.  Overall, the project dragged on longer than expected, but that was mainly due to loss of focus and taking time off due to weather and illness.  We did not finish-up prior to the onset of winter rains (as we had hoped to do) so we had to postpone work on the project until early spring.

Here is a basic sketch that I drew to show my husband what I wanted to do to the back yard.  He's a good sport for moving ahead with the project even though he has little ability to visualize the end result and must move forward--with a LOT of destruction and hard labor--on the basis of blind faith.

Backyard sketch.

The house is represented by the area of white, negative space on the left side of the sketch.  The detail in the bottom left corner is the (proposed) patio surface of cut and re-laid concrete. There is an outdoor counter drawn adjacent to the house--its main purpose is to camouflage a crawl space hatch cover.  The counter is the only part of the plan not completed and I've decided to replace this element with a rolling bench/trellis.

Our house was built in 1954 and has modest mid-century styling. We decided to use concrete throughout the landscaping--doing so seemed both current and appropriate to the style of the house.  I was also concerned about keeping the effect modest and creative.  So, I decided to experiment with the use of concrete in many of its forms:  poured, blocks, rip rap, crushed etc.  I had already specified new, poured concrete stairs and entry path at the front of the house and I wanted to continue the use of concrete in a more informal manner at the back of the house.

This magazine clipping (below) was, I think, inspiration to cut up the existing concrete into strips.  I planned to re-lay them with the cut surfaces exposed as can be seen, here, on the fronts of the steps.

Landscape design by Shirley Watts Landscape Design

I also collected magazine clippings of several other designs which featured use of concrete strips of varying types. 

Magazine clipping--source unknown.

This picture (below) illustrating the proposed High Line inspired me with the way the plantings infiltrated the edges of the paving creating a soft look.

Illustration of High Line project, source unknown.

The first order of business was to cut the patio into 5" wide strips, which I intended to re-use.  We sought professional bids for this job, but were astounded by the cost.  Clearly, we could not afford to pay someone to turn our concrete into strips.  This brought on some soul searching.  Maybe it was too costly to indulge my aesthetic?  Maybe using pavers would be OK after all?   After dithering about it for a while, we decided that we could try to cut the concrete ourselves.   We marked the lines, rented a 20" concrete saw and went at it.  It took a long time.  I'm sure professionals could have done the job in a single weekend.  We suffered with a bad saw, a bad blade, various hassles and general inexperience, and it took us 3 weekends.  But we did it.  My husband operated the concrete saw while I followed along vacuuming up the concrete slurry--water from the saw mixed with concrete dust.  There was jack-hammering, too--both of the concrete and of the compacted hard-pan lying underneath. Eventually, we'd created enough concrete strips for our needs, removed the remainder, and lowered the ground level sufficiently to build a proper patio base.  We also jack-hammered out hardpan from the planting pockets which became, essentially, big basins.  

Beginning the concrete cutting job.

Because we didn't want to create an unprotected slope for any longer than necessary, we designated removal of the retaining wall as a separate project phase.  To preserve the wall, we severed the patio from the retaining wall and its footing, whatever that might prove to be.  And...it turned out to be nothing.  Not negligible, but really NOTHING.  The wall blocks were not even adhered to the base.  I'm surprised that the whole thing hadn't fallen down years ago.  We thought that removing the retaining wall would be one of the more difficult parts of the job--imagining that we would have to dig deep to excavate a substantial concrete footing--but, in fact, it was one of the easiest.

Much concrete gone; wall and footing remaining.  You can see how the wall doesn't extend all the way to the back of the hillside.

Reverse view.  This is our back door, kitchen and  bathroom windows.

Look!  Here's our "concrete harvest".  I planned to re-lay the strips on their sides (cut surface facing up) with the original tops together and the rough (ground cast) sides facing each other and separated by about 4 inches of packed gravel.

Harvest of concrete "sticks".

The roughly leveled patio base is in--a good working surface for the rest of the job--and we moved on to the retaining wall construction.

The patio base is 5" below grade.  When it rains, you know what that means, right?

Some work has been done...but more rain.  I started laying strips in the middle of the patio area and worked out to both sides to avoid amplifying any errors across the entire project.  In the end, though, I was really proud of the degree of accuracy that we were able to achieve.

One of the difficulties of this job was that the homemade concrete cutting did not yield strips that were uniformly 5" deep.  I had envisioned the concrete-laying part of the job to be like laying pavers on a leveled base when, in actuality, it was more like laying flagstones--lots of trial and error, back-filling and minor adjustment to account for their varying thickness.

Half done!  I filled-in between the strips with packed gravel and at the ends (where I wanted to plant) with a soil/gravel mix.

Eventually, I worked my way to the other end and completed the patio.  

And then I built an arbor.  And I constructed a paver path (meant to be a little more temporary, because I don't love it so much) along the house to the storage shed and continuing on around the side of the house.  We decided to give up on the idea of growing grass in our shady, swampy backyard and put down cedar play chips instead.  The first plants went in during the spring and summer of 2012.

The state of things at the end of summer 2012.

But...I never liked the way the patio ended so abruptly and the planting area looked stingy and narrow.  In my defence, I was trying to accommodate family desires to retain a maximum amount of open space in the yard.  It didn't look right, though.  And the remaining space is so small anyway...and still swampy...so I extended the path all the way to the shed and added additional planting space between the paths.  I used the same plants on both sides of the straight path and encourage them to overhang the path thereby minimizing its appearance.

Extending the path through the back yard.  Spring 2013.

We had taken most of the extra concrete sticks to a recyclers, but I retained a few pieces to be used in an "emergency."  Extending the path was just this sort of emergency.  Much to my husband's chagrin, we now found ourselves returning to the concrete recycler to clamber over the piles of dumped riprap in search of concrete chunks to BRING BACK HOME! It was a little embarrassing, I'll grant you, but free!

Rough fitting of the new path "stones".

This (below) is probably one of the most current pictures of this area.  The new area between the paths, which was completed and planted this spring, has really filled out.  Alchemilla is planted everywhere at the "three corners" intersection of the path.  Other plants are Brunnera macrophylla, Siberian iris, Darmera peltata, and Lobelia siphilitica.  The big plant with pink blooms (fading) is Eupatorium cannabinum flore pleno, which has grown much bigger than anticipated and (much to my disappointment) is sterile--so disappointing to see hopeful bees or butterflies approach for a closer look before turning and looking elsewhere.  In spring, I'll replace this plant with something else.

"Swamp Garden" and view back towards the house and patio--late summer 2013.

So, in summary...

Before

After (At Present)

I take pride in the fact that the finished project closely resembles the original plan.  I think the construction is well done, too.  We've spent more time in this back area than we did prior to the remodel. And we've seen an unanticipated benefit as well--the old patio used to hold water during rains and, while never flooding into the house, remained a swimming pool all winter.  We took pains, throughout this project, to correct the drainage issues.  That, and the fact that the porous design drains better than the solid slab, has yielded a patio surface that remains dry in even the heaviest storms.  All in all, a satisfying outcome.

Garden: Tricyrtis--Bent on World Domination

Last spring I planted a couple of tricyrtis in the back yard.  Both grew as expected for a same-year planting and seemed happy.  One of them then spent the entire off-season sending out an impressive quantity of rhizomes. This year, BOTH of them are growing rhizomes at an impressive rate AND plant #1 is both reseeding itself AND tip-rooting from the flowering stalks.  Pretty impressive, no?  It is too soon to say whether or not I will regret planting these two, although I generally appreciate aggressive growers.

Rhizomes on plant #2

Seedlings and tip-rooted branches on Plant #1

I've been feeling benevolent towards the seedlings that are growing in the patio crevices--I WANT greenery to invade the spaces between the cement slabs--but I now realize that I'm going to have to get them out of there. I want to encourage compact growers in the spaces, not large and rangy plants.    Pretty soon I'll be weeding these guys out.

Garden: Buh Bye, Annabelle and Karl

I proposed to do it and then I did.  I yanked out the Annabelles (which I loved) and the Karl Foerster feather reed grass (which I had begun really to hate).  Don't worry, there's still a lot of Karl Foerster elsewhere in my garden.

Here's the front bed where the Annabelles used to live:

Front bed sans Annabelles; replanted.  For scale, there is a span of about 7 feet separating the base of the Joe Pye (on the right) from the Pennisetum (on the left).

Immediately after I removed them, I felt a sense of relief from their hulking presence.  Even though there is obvious carnage and a hole remains, I have no misgivings as I realized an immediate benefit.  The other side of the border (redesigned this spring) no longer seems quite as spindly and poorly grown now that it is not required to visually balance the dense mounds of hydrangea bloom and foliage.

I've already fully replanted the cleared area with Chasmanthium latifolium, "Bombshell" hydrangea, and Sweet Cicely.  If reseeding is a problem with the Chasmanthium, I am REALLY going to be in trouble--I've added it everywhere!  Next year, I'll cut back the Joy Pye to try and keep it in scale.  This plant, Eupatorium dubium "Phantom", was supposed to be about 2-2 1/2 feet tall yet every year it tops out at about 6-7 feet.  Three to four feet would be more in scale with the other plantings.  I hope that an annual cutback will keep it within that size range.  It's awkwardly tied-up now to replace some of the support that the Annabelles used to provide.

Across the entry path, this is the newly "Karl-free" area:

Again, I didn't feel as much angst as I thought I would for removing several mature plants--they just didn't serve the need, design-wise, and they were much worse for wear due to the near-constant battle with rust.  

I've never been as confident with the planting on this side of the path.   There are a couple of small shrubs serving as an understory for the vine maples and there's supposed to be a tapestry of groundcovers including Ajuga genevensis (blue), Gallium odorata, and purple heucheras.  It all needs to mature.  I think I may replace the Karl Foerster with Hachonechloa.  I've had good luck with it in other locations and I used it across the path (where the Annabelles came out) to face-down the Chasmanthium.  I'd use it in the same capacity, here.  I'm also toying with the idea of adding Sweet Cicely to this garden.

About the iris, the less said the better.  They are left over from a previous iteration of the garden and I really like them when they flower, but I think I should replace them with something more attractive year-round.  Comments and suggestions are welcomed.

Garden: Today's Photo(s)

A new day brings a new color scheme for the front garden...and, for someone who "doesn't like pink", a lot of pink. A lot of umbellifers, too, but I'm OK with that.   Although, you'll see why I made an effort to add more "spires" and "bobbles" during the great spring makeover.  

Sedum "Autumn Joy" with spent Queen Anne's Lace blooms.

Same plants with a bit of white coming from Gaura and some Joe Pye looming in the shady background.

Same plants, again, with an annual pennisetum to the left--I love this plant close-up, but it doesn't show well from a distance.