We finally started to make headway on revamping the tired landscaping surrounding the house; we refer to the area as the “house garden(s).” Just about everything out there dates back to when the house was built in 1966, so we have lots of old shrubs intermixed with a bunch of volunteers. So back in 2016 we hired a landscape architect firm and started down the garden path, but that particular firm just didn’t listen to the things we said, so I fired them–the only time so far I’ve dropped a contractor.
I found another option and we worked with him to draw up some plans. Then I went through round after round of trying to find a landscaping company that I felt could handle the work. Four times over the years I had different firms in, went over their bids and portfolios, and of them only one seemed viable. If we were a normal property with a simple front and backyard, it would not have been such a saga, but nothing here is normal.
The complicating factor is that we want to gather our own rainwater–you know, that stuff that falls from the sky. Back in 2018 gutters were installed on the house, and we already had gutters on the garage and scuppers on the studio building, and the courtyard has a slight slope to direct water towards a drain between the garage and studio building. Thus capturing all that water and storing it for use to irrigate stuff during the dry summers is a smart idea. So we not only have a non-standard “yard,” we also want to do something very outside of normal.
But we do at least have plans, although they are currently being revised. One stage of the plans was completed this past winter–the courtyard area, which was really just planting bits outside the front door, my office door and Agent Smith’s office door. Here are some before pics; as you can see, all the original pavers have settled in the almost sixty years since they were poured in place. (All those pink marks are from the scanning guy, who came out to locate things for us so we didn’t accidentally electrocute the crew that would be coming to do the work.)
Then in mid-December of last year, a crew arrived and began tearing out all the old stuff.
Soon all the old pavers were reduced to rubble, and after a short bit of instruction using my very bad conversational Spanish, the forewoman was happily ferrying all the rubble over to the spoil pile out by the RV pad.
Once the destruction was over, it was time to rebuild…