Front yard renovation January 2011

Job 6. I got married and my wife who is an artist (visually oriented) hated the front yard ... or lack of one! I decided to completely make over the front of her new home. She loves gardening, so we planned several small and easy to keep garden spaces. I needed somewhere to park my truck and trailers, and a space to work, so we also planned a useable open space where I could 'play'! The difficulty was that the land sloped in two directions and drainage would have to be part of the project design,  as it rains a lot in Auckland.

My brother in law kindly put my ideas onto a plan so I had a guide to work from in ordering the materials. This was to be my first big landscaping project... This is what I had to start with.

I began at the front most area. I wanted some privacy to work in and less road noise too, so I took out the hedge,

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...and built a step paling fence 1.8m high and 30 m long.

The next step was to kill the lawn off to prevent regrowth

Now the fun part - digging and destruction!

In this shot I have had the timber for the retaining wall and privacy screen delivered. I have the post holes dug, and I am saving the existing path way to create an intermediate level, breaking up the sloping yard into two distinct areas, one level grassed area behind the privacy screen, and one gradient slope for the concrete parking area

 The shot above shows the 3.6m posts for the privacy screen in place, 

The drainage coil going under the path to join the lower retaining wall drainage system. This was sat on fine draining mix and covered with volcanic pebble which was laid over with weed mat to prevent silting up later.

 Top and bottom retaining walls are in and the privacy screen is up. My wife is itching to get the garden started and has the Bay trees in and some red Flax in the corner garden already!

Now I have used up the river stone from the previous path and some railway sleepers cut to form the feature garden on the old pathway. I am using the bits of concrete rubble that came out of the driveway wall as fill for the new path to make the river stones go further.

At this stage the old driveway had to go. That meant shipping it to the dump at considerable cost (concrete recyclers may not accept concrete with steel in) I had planned for this, using it as fill/ base for the free drainage parking area so we shifted it in slabs with the digger across to the right a couple of meters saving cash and putting it to good use.

Beside the concrete driveway, I wanted a free draining stone chip parking area where I could service my truck and machines without spoiling the concrete with oil spills etc. Here is the granite chip being laid over the concrete to raise the level by 400mm to meet the driveway level

Connecting the storm water channel at the bottom of the driveway to the main system via cesspit.

Concrete arrived at 6.00 am and took a morning to pour and level and expose the aggregate

The next pictures are about 18 months later. The concrete has weathered to an even tone, gardens are established and house repainted to better suit the new yard! The landscaping part of the project took about 3 months to complete.  I was doing it in my spare time before and after work and week ends, most of it on my own.

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