Lots of progress

Yard all cleaned up with the 60-year old hedge, fence, and shed all gone.

Laying out where things will go.

Digging the footings for the stone wall that will deal with the grade change
from the back of the yard to the back of the house.

The footings for the lily pond being put into place.

The gravel roughly lays out where the terrace, paths, and wall will go.

Nellie Stevens holly bushes installed along the driveway. Over time they will naturalize and look less like Christmas trees.
We wanted something that would provide screening and also be good habitat for birds.

Our giant pieces of granite arrived from Massachusetts. As I mentioned before, it is from an old barn
and was quarried prior to 1880. One piece was over 10 feet long which
is pretty unusual for reclaimed stone.

View from the second floor deck showing new magnolia on the left, the pleached hornbeams in the back,
and the poured concrete lily pond under the black tarp. You can also see some
of the stones that have been brought in to start making the wall.

And from a little stone to a lot of stone. Lots more irregular pieces brought in for the wall.
Bluestone pavers for the terrace. You can also see the stone wall taking shape
and the granite steps in the background.

Reclaimed granite cobbles for a smaller terrace that will have a large copper flower urn on it. 

The chipmunks love the pile of rocks.

 

Here you can see how great the monolithic pieces of granite look in place.

Those three big blocks of reclaimed granite will be used for a landing stoop outside the carriage house doors.

Our stone mason Rob Page does a great job finding the right weathered rocks for the right spots.

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The stone mess from another angle. Photo taken from the upper level at the back of the yard.
There will be a 7-foot privacy fence behind the arborvitae.

DeGroot's Spire Arborvitae in place along what will be the fence line.

One of the many neighborhood chipmunks.

The unfinished lily pond seen through the pleached hornbeams.

 

The birds love all of the upturned earth.

Another visitor

 

We've seen foxes quite a bit this year. Not sure if we keep seeing the same one or not.
I wish I had gotten a picture of the one I saw climbing over the 7-foot wood fence at the back of the property.

Lucy has one spot on the screened porch that isn't covered up by the temporary protective boards.

Keeping an eye on critters.

During the rain delay...

Not much happened in the yard last week except rain. Lots and lots of rain. I offered to send our portion to Alberta to help put out the wildfires there but Mother Nature didn't seem interested. Our landscaper/stone mason took the opportunity to go to the sunny shores of Massachusetts to source some granite slabs for the steps that will lead up to the pond at the back of the yard.

From what we are told it is Cape Ann granite that was part of an old barn and quarried prior to 1880. Can't wait to see it on site.

So what is the yard actually going to look like?

When we bought our house in 2010 John was, shall we say, excited to get started on the yard. One of the reasons we bought the house was because it had a fairly large yard for the neighborhood. Almost twice as wide as most and with better standoff distances from our neighbors. Still, at 0.21 acres it isn't huge, but it did have huge potential. So not long after we moved in John had done his homework and found a landscape architect he really wanted to work with. Enter Thomas Rainer. What John particularly liked about Thomas and his work was that he is a landscape architect with the heart of a gardener. You would think those two things would always go together, but they don't.

We were lucky enough that Thomas had the time and was interested in working with us on our project. The planner in me was thinking we were more than a little premature in hiring him before we had even a clue what the house project would look like, but John's enthusiasm would not be assuaged. Once we had concept designs we all decided we needed to put them on the shelf until we at least knew the geometry of the house addition.

Over the following five years, while we focused on the house, Thomas and his wife had a son, Thomas became more and more in demand as a lecturer, and he co-wrote a fantastic book called Planting in a Post-Wild World.

After completing our house project I didn't realize how low my tolerance was for managing the yard project until I heard myself saying as much, and very forcefully so, at a project meeting with Thomas. Being far busier than I am, Thomas realized he needed to hand off the management of our project to someone who we could all trust to get it done with as little hassle to me and John.

Enter Hilary Oat-Judge, a seasoned landscape architect who knows Thomas well and has started her own landscape design business. After meeting her we were confident that she was not only in sympathy with our ideas and Thomas Rainer's design, but that she also was an organized, take charge, kind of person.

Since Hilary came on the job things have been moving along at a healthy clip and each step of the way we find ourselves pleased with her design input and ability to really get things done.

I'll have more to say about the design of the garden as things progress, but I thought you all might like seeing the overall plan to get a sense of what is coming. One big, big, change from the design below is the fact that we decided not to put in a swimming pool. Although there are many good reasons for this deletion, John is still mourning the fact that he isn't getting a pool. But he is getting a water feature that you can see in the second image below. Make sure you click on both images as they can get much bigger and easier to read.

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You can see how the design changes without the pool. The rectangle in the center will be a
beautifully simple, concrete fountain with the hornbeams as backdrop and surrounded
by gravel rather than the paving shown in the original design.

The hornbeams have landed

Our seven hornbeams arrived the last week of March and are now, hopefully, enjoying their new home. We've had a bit of a cold snap and this weekend it is supposed to get down to 27 degrees. I assume they will be okay. They are a little too big to cover with a sheet.

Even though the bamboo frames used to pleach the trees look like you could string power lines from them, I like them for two reasons: 1) they show how fantastic the hornbeams will be at screening our view and offering more privacy; and 2) the birds love to perch on them. I love the fact that we will be providing a place for birds to hang out.

 

Hiccup Number 1: We found the old pool

Some time in the 1960s (we think) the owner's of our house removed the small swimming pool they had in the back yard. We were hoping to put in a pool of our own but logistics and cost made us decide to not do a swimming pool but put in a small reflecting pool instead.

This morning as they continued to prep the back yard for the delivery of our trees next week. They discovered the old pool. And they discovered that most of it had to be broken up and carted away. Not only is it in the way of where the hornbeams are set to go, but it is also in the way of where the reflecting pool is going.

So our landscaper made a quick call to a rental equipment center and they thankfully had the additional machinery needed to break up the old concrete and cart it out. I don't know why we didn't think that the old pool might still be under there somewhere. Oh well, all's well that ends well.

The earth mover on top of what turned out to be the old pool.

The pool emerges from the earth.

The walls of the pool are gone, the bottom of it being broken up so the new trees have proper drainage.