About three or so weeks ago I featured the final cleaning up of the front of the house. The grass is growing and we have a nice row of privet, boxwood and glass bells planted along the foundation. It has started to look orderly again. The remaining piece of the puzzle was out back.
The backyard in the United States is the "private space" of the residence. It is the traditional garden area with recreation space and room to relax with the house blocking activities from passers-by on the road. Of course back gardens vary a great deal from house to house and with my relative disdain for excessive manicured lawns I wanted a back yard that was suitable for recreation but not overly large. The grounds are all to often over-looked in architecture. This is a pity as the grounds reflect the house. It is very easy to mismatch the two and end up with a disaster.
Our house is located on just over 4 acres of land. There is a lovely little red barn with horse paddock out back and our property line is set back in the woods around the entire property. One of the best parts of the Homestead is that it commands a lovely view of the property out back which we intend to leave fairly natural (except for up around the house). Our master suite, kitchen and living room are positioned to take advantage of the privacy and view across the back three acres of the property. The deck with its outdoor fireplace is the crown jewel of the back gardens. We wanted the area around the house to be tidy and composed but the rest of the property left fairly natural. So, Tuesday was land moving day!
As of last Monday this was the disorganized disaster that met the eye in back of the house. The rock wall is part of the master plan but is not complete and gives little hint to its final place in the yard. Note the large plant covered mound at the head of the wall....this pile of loam had been there since we finished excavation last year. I had become so used to this tumor in our back garden that I had quite forgotten about it. That was at least until I had 13 yards of topsoil dumped next to it (right of the green pile).
The first step was to start moving dirt. Bill used his skid steer to move topsoil from the pile around the area to the right of the wall.
Here is a great deal of the soil place above the wall to create a level surface around the deck area to the wall which will form the confines of the manicured lawn.
Next came time to install the "steps" to the cross through/mudroom door. This beast pushed the skid steer to its limits. Once we had the step in place we returned to moving dirt and I carted wheel barrow load after load of rocks out of the dirt to a pile in front of the wall.
New England soil is really rocky. It was hard going for early settlers here because the ground was not terribly giving. When the Western Reserve (Ohio and the plain states) was opened in the early 1800's many settlers who had grown weary of hard scrabble farming in New England headed west to fight Indians and settle the land which has become known as the bread basket to the world.
We used the last of the dirt in the large pile to sweep down around the rock wall and return the terrain around the barn to a natural landscape. We then smoothed out and filled in the area around the cross through door.
If you look to the right you can see the terrain sloping away and down along the barn.
The final step for Bill was to distribute the loam in the big green pile around the back. You can see the piles dumped in areas around the back of the deck for me to smooth out. This is rich healthy topsoil and makes a nice top layer....once you get all the rock out.
After several more hours of raking and leveling the backyard has begun to look like something. Now missing is the infamous "green pile" at the end of the wall.
The ground is now all level across the back and meets the bottom of the stairs.
As planned, the rock wall now acts as a retaining wall with about 6" of rock showing above the level terrain. Here you can see the backyard seed with grass seed and watered down to let the seed grow. Note the deck legs still visible. The railing goes in next and the lattice under the deck.
The rock wall once again, almost complete. Stephen Kiss finished it today and I am putting in the railing on the deck. Stay tuned for more photos!
1 comments:
Looks like you made a lot of progress. And, I completely agree with this statement: "The grounds are all to often over-looked in architecture."
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