Garden Intro

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Garden Intro

• When I left the family maggot ranch behind, I
  swore a mighty oath my hands would never touch
  dirt again. An oath I stuck to for nigh on
  fifteen years -)
• Michelle and I bought our first house in
  Arlington, Virginia a fixer in many respects.
  We began dealing with the years of overgrowth and
  neglect and uncovered a few planting beds. I
  bought some plants just to fill the space and
  much to my surprise Michelle and I turned out
  to quite enjoy gardening. One could create a
  visually pleasing artifact out of living
  material a most interesting concept. I went a
  little postal and began converting any potential
  space into a new planting bed. I bought
  interesting plant material, and Michelle would
  transform the space an equitable solution!
• Moving to California intensified the attraction
  anything and everything grows here. We bought
  another fixer, and went totally overboard.
• I was hesitant to even view our new home it was
  near a highway exit and I am highly allergic to
  noise. But it had a big lot and was a rare
  Walnut Creek find it was within the price range
  of mortals. We stopped in and were instantly
  hooked.
• The house and the yard were in poor to terrible
  shape, but my ghod, the potential! An amazingly
  large living room w/fireplace and a giant,
  extremely private, backyard. And a cute little
  guest cottage out back! The developer of the
  neighborhood had built this house for himself,
  and added a detached in-law suite with full
  kitchenbath for his father. It could double as
  a home office for Michelles writing and a place
  for visiting family and friends. We would have
  our work cut out for us, but the end result
  looked to be worth the sweat
• Cut to three years later. We didnt really know
  what we were doing a priori, but sitting in our
  backyard now, we can look around and go yeah,
  this worked out, just right.
• Ive become a big fan of iterative development
  and scaffolding as a direct result of our garden
  project. We placed very stringent functional and
  esthetic requirements on the garden. Refactoring
  the backyard in stages while continually using
  the entire space was extremely useful. We
  modified our basic designs several times as a
  direct result of using the space in essentially
  an Alpha release form.
• We now have what verges on an absurd number of
  lounging areas out back, each with differing
  sun/shade properties and differing views. Our
  backyard had quite a slope to it, which has
  allowed me to play a lot with forced
  perspectives, shapes, and varying heights in the
  beds. Michelles touch with arrangements factors
  in height and blooming season along with colour
  and texture balances. Were pretty pleased with
  the results so far check it out!

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About The Overview

• This mockup gives a rough top-down view of our
  garden to date. Planting beds are in green,
  while the basic shape of the yard, paths seating
  areas are shown in gold. Grey areas are reserved
  for future expansion.
• Each bed is on the order of 25 to 75 square feet.
  Four are seasonal bulb beds, three are largely
  succulents and cacti. There are about
  thirty-five rose bushes and three annual splash
  o colour beds.
• We are isolated from most things by a thick band
  of trees, with full screening growing in nicely!
  There are several truly majestic fir trees, two
  lemon trees, a grapefruit tree, three (immature)
  orange trees. A crepe myrtle and an elm provide
  much-needed shade to the center of the garden
  while a handful of scraggly plum trees form a
  shady nook in the back.
• There are eleven major lounging areas, laid out
  such that one has multiple sun / shade options at
  any time of day, in any season of the year.
  Three areas also double as star-gazing zones rah!

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Garden Overview
Guest Cottage
Deck
Future Expansion
Hot Tub
House