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| June / July 2005 | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Our backyard could definitely have qualified as one of the North Shore's "ugliest backyards". But not for long! With a little vision, a little time, a lot of muscle and a tiny landscaping wagon, the two of us got to work and transformed the yard into a patio oasis! We slowly got rid of everything, from rotten fences in process of collapse (that's a shovel propping up the fence in the photo below in the sunshine), to thickets of ivy and blackberry, to weed-covered grass. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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Scroll down for more images of the process and completion...
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| Before & After; from our deck outside the kitchen | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Step 1: Removing fences and ivy | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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| This step took Andre several days and was a huge amount of work. All the wood had to be cut up, the lattice sections saved for what would become a short "Ernie Fence", the ivy torn down and along with the waste wood taken to the dump in several trailer loads. |  |
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| Step 2; Hedges
Andre transplanted the hedge that had been behind our fence bordering to our neighbour on the south side (below) over to the boundary with our neighbour to the north side. The one side of the hedge is nice and green, while the other side (the one that had been against the fence) is all brown and dead. We purchased some amazing 10-foot cedars and planted them where this hedge had once been, as these neighbours were happy to have us do the work and pay half for the cost of the trees. The other neighbour, however, wasn't going to fork over a penny for a new hedge and claimed he didn't care what we put there. Soooo, after Andre removed the fences, he got the ugly brown side and we got the nice green side of the hedge from neighbour #1 ! |
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| Andre transplanted this hedge to the side bordering the other neighbour, with the brown dead side (as shown above) facing him and the nice green side facing us. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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| New hedge (on left) along our back, and the transplanted hedge from the previous photo along the side with some transplanted hydrengea bushes in front (kind of wahsed out in the sun). | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Step 3; Borders and Paving Stones | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| This was the fun step! Now the backyard really took shape. A van load of small paving stones for borders (2,500 pounds worth!), 3 trailer loads (about 24 wheelbarrel loads) of topsoil, and 43 2-foot by 2-foot paving stone slabs weighing in a 110 pounds each!
Every single item, (including those huge trees) had to be carted uphill alongside our house from the driveway into the back. And the clearance between our house and the fence is only 3 feet - barely wide enough for our little landscaping wagon to pass by! Each tree, each load of soil, each load of bricks and each load of slabs (only 3 slabs at a time!), had to be hauled up this long, narrow gravel path - Andre would pull and I would push. But the results speak for themselves!... |
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