Landscaping Project

Well there has been a LOT happening here with a capital "L"!!! The letter L has been implemented in the transformation of our yard this and last week and we couldn't be happier with the outcome!!! I will try to describe the sequence of events, but it is probabally hard to fully comprehend the yard situation unless you have actually seen our yard and the incredible transformation that has occured there. I will post some before and after pictures, but getting a feel for what happened might be hard.

To start off..This is what our yard looked like in March of 2006, just one short year ago! It is followed by a picture of the house right now.

As you can see in the first photo above, there was one ENTIRE level of our house that was not surrounded by earth. The terrace patio gives evidence to this "missing" earth around the house. You can see the two legs holding up the terrace/patio in the picture above, but no earth around it. Our WHOLE yard needed to be filled up to this level because we really wanted a "walk out" yard. Do you have any idea how many SEMI-TRUCKS of earth that equals?! A LOT! We also didn't want our yard to slope. We wanted to have as much flat yard as possible so the kids could run and play and kick a ball without it going into the forest! We have a small playhouse, a swingset and a sandbox all that need a nice flat yard.

We initially tried to grade the yard into the forest with a slight slope. The result did not give us much satisfaction. The slope was steep enough that Kaitlyn would be falling down it constantly. To further push us into our decision about the yard, our next door neighbors decided they were going to have L shaped elements added to their yard so they could make the most out of their yard. We struggled with this decision, but eventually gave in and last week was "L week".

The L's are layed along the property limit next to each other to form a wall (in our case against the forest) and then the land is filled in around them. They have really made a difference in our yard! We actaully have a FLAT backyard now. It will be much easier to mow and maintain and will also be WONDERFUL for the kids to play in! We LOVE our new backyard!!

The next 3 photos follow the process of the "L's". The first is a shot with the slope before the L's, the second is of the "process" and finally you can see the yard finished with the L wall and filled in!

That gives a pretty good idea of what the L's do. They support the land so that the maximum amount of flat and useable yard can be achieved.

Here are a few photos of the shared decent we did into the forest (a before and after shot). We made the access directly on the property lines of our neighbors so we could both use it.

This is a shot of the landscapers during their work and followed by a photo of how FLAT and nice the yard is now after the L's are in!!

So for the next few weeks the project is on hold, since we've been having frost the last few nights, the landscaper wants to wait a bit. He mentioned early or mid-April for the fence and grass. We are REALLY looking forward to this. Although there is still the driveway project to complete (with handlayed bricks), we were much more excited to finish the yard. The driveway currently has gravel down so it is fairly clean and very functional. Not so with the backyard...we haven't even let the kids play AT ALL in the yard since we moved here because it was so dirty and dangerous (with all of the different levels and construction debris). NOW we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Just a few more weeks and we'll be seeing a GREEN grass on that nice flat backyard of ours! We are really excited!

Here is a video: