Landscape Plan

It's Friday, Friday!  Gotta get down on Friday!  

Anybody with me?!  No?  You're too cool to rock some Friday action here on IDO?  Ha, guess I'm good with being the lone dork.  (And btw, this video was the best I could do, since the original was pulled off youtube.)

Fine, I'll forget about Friday for a moment and get down to bidness.  We are waiting on one last touch to our new deck construction and then I'll share photos, but for now I wanted to share some different "decor" out there.  But first, the back story....

Now that we have a pretty place to sit or entertain outside (the deck), it became clear that our backyard was a little trashy.  There are elements that are fine, but everything was so exposed and harsh.  And looked like you could easily have a barefoot half-nakey baby, clad only in their diaper, sort of wandering through the yard looking confused, with some shmear of chocolate or mud across his face.  I mean that would, like, NEVER actually happen here, but the yard looks like it could easily welcome that sort of thing.  Seriously, a half-nakey, dirty baby never happens at my house.   After all, we are blog-perfect.

Anyhow, the back yard contains a fire pit, 2 raised garden beds, a playscape, a sandbox and the woods.  As much as I wanted it nicely landscaped  to make everything cohesive, charming, inviting, and beautiful, it was not a financial priority to pay thousands of dollars to have it done.  But, I figured I could do a lot of the physical labor myself, so I hired a landscape designer to come measure, plan and draw out a master plan for me to work off in the months (years?) to come.  I have no intention of making the design happen quickly, and I am fine with it unfolding over a period of time.  Though I hope to do a lot of the work myself, there are a couple of industrious young men in the neighborhood who are willing to come help me out as needed for a few bucks.  Actually, they have already helped me and I am enjoying getting to know more neighbors.  

So, now for the decor part.  I took the master drawing of the landscape plan, had it laminated and wanted it to be somewhere that will be easy to reference.  The drawing now has a new home on the deck, stuck to the siding with 3M poster strips.  See the strips in the first photo?  There are four strips there now, but I didn't think to take a photo til already started hanging the poster.  

The design is so beautiful that it is its own art work out there.  It is interesting to look at, and even the lettering and outlines of each plant are attractive.

See the big circle with spokes on the left side of the drawing?  That is an existing willow tree on the property, which is probably my favorite plant that was already in place. 

The design has another part to it, which is the key to each plant.  Every plant has a number and the plants are all listed out so I know exactly what to look for and purchase.  I am keeping a copy of that on the deck, as well as in my car, in case I ever have time to stop a nursery unexpectedly.  

It was well worth it to hire out a plan like this.  The designer knows what she is doing!  It would have taken months/years/never for me to research and come up with something that wouldn't even be half as good.  She knows the soil here (crappy clay and rocks), she easily assessed light conditions (turns out the back yard is significantly shadier than I thought), and took slope and water control into consideration.  For example, there is a trashy looking ditch that we had to dig through the yard to divert water from the house in case of a big rain event like we had last year when our basement flooded.  We literally had a small river flowing into the basement from the back yard and would prefer not to deal with that again.  Well, our designer took one look at it and suggested a dry creek bed, which would not only be functional when it rains hard, but would look better and not be the tripping hazard as it is now.  Genius!  

So far, I have worked on one portion of the plan.  Looking at the design, if you see the large rectangles at the top, that represents the new deck and the back of the house.  There are 11 plants in front of the deck, 6 azeleas and 5 endless summer hydrangeas.  This is where my neighborhood hired help came in handy... the guys dug my holes (through some old concrete in places) using picks and shovels (misery!) and helped me get the plants that I picked up the day before into the ground.  

Note :

• There's the willow I love so much.  The breeze makes it move beautifully.
• I put a soaker hose on the new plantings until they get established.
• I purchased the smallest pots available because it was cheaper than huge pots... I am fine with it taking awhile for the azaleas and hydrangeas to get big.
• The new plants are mostly in the shade, though they get about an hour of direct sun around 1:00 after the sun moves beyond the tree line of the woods and before it moves behind the deck roof.  These are shade loving plants, so we will see how they do with that little bit of sun.  
• Dave built a french drain to also help with water control, which is covered by pebbles behind the plants.

***Update***
My landscape designer is Sarah Thelen and her business name is Southern Native Landscape Design, located in the Birmingham, AL, area.  I think she's awesome, which is why I blogged about the design (she didn't ask me to or even know about it until after I posted and asked if I could put her info online).  Check out her facebook page.