{Back Yard} Dog House Garden

Hello! I'm back again with another garden update - this time with the backyard area, that I'll call "the dog house garden" although we never really call it that. Do you name your garden spaces? We have Lily's Garden, the "South Side Garden" (which I only use as it's on the south side of the house, we sometimes call it "the garden outside the TV room window"), and then there is the backyard, which includes a bunch of other spaces. It can get confusing. 

Anyway... the doghouse, which is definitely used more by chickens in the rain than any of my dogs, was the original piece in this area. It went to a large tree years ago (to the right of the picture above) but it came down years ago after a bad ice storm. I then sent out a plea for large galvanized containers and my parents found them all (minus the little square one) from a farmer they knew. If I could have more of them, they'd be used as raised beds in a veggie garden. Some day... The little square one was my grandmother's. 

I made this space years ago and it fell into "needs work" category but not high on our lists as the backyard gets ignored. But I bought more bags of mulch than I needed for Lily's Garden so I decided to spruce it up. I had already started by weeding it pretty extensively. Truth be told, it needs more help but you can't see it in this picture. I'm also thinking of adding a tall Japanese maple in the back corner where we haven't had luck growing other things. 

See those containers on the stairs to nowhere? The painted ones are from a friend (hi Candace!) and they finally have some transplanted plants in them. The other two are just random ones we've collected and put up here. 

Most of the supplies for this garden were free - from the galvanized containers to the rocks (taken from my parent's farm) to the gravel (from our front yard before we redid our sidewalks) to the plants (mostly from other plants and some from the farm). I did buy some lavender as my chickens won't touch it. The doghouse was made by my dad and his students when he taught construction. The stone borders were leftovers from a project at my parents' house. Not too bad for a mostly free area, right? 

Now you can view all "Dog House Garden" posts here. 

{Back Yard} Dry Creek Bed

Good Morning, friends! After the crazy amount of rain we've had in Missouri lately, this project will be well loved. Actually, it's not even done and I love it already. 

During the creation of this area, Doug and I were planning the container locations and realized that the gutter would create a great little dry creek bed aka gutter run off aka rain garden. I like the name rain garden so it may stick. For now, it's just what you see here - dirt, mud, mulch, and rocks. Oh so many rocks.

But lets get to the pictures. Here it is before I did anything. I didn't spread the mulch out everywhere knowing that I would be back at it for this project. The handful of mulch between the fish and the square container was just poorly placed mulch that I got too lazy to deal with at the time. This is also after super heavy rains over the past few days and the gutter definitely showed us where to dig the dry creek. 

Here you can see more of the actual path that the gutter run off created. Due to the slop of the ground (the nature of our backyard and then enforced by us as we worked on it), it already drained away from the house. This is definitely key here! 

The green plastic was leftover from a previous homeowner. We still run into those problems even after 8 years of living here. That's how unloved this back yard area really was. Not anymore! 

So bright and early this morning (after dropping the kids off at daycare anyway), I started digging. It was definitely muddy and easy to create a little stream. Like I said, we had help from all of the rain. If I could send some of this rain west, I would. I know California needs it. 

The black liner is from my dad. He picked it up so it wasn't just thrown away from his old job. It's been hanging out at his place (along with LOTS of extra… so much so that I may find another spot for it…) and worked perfect for this project. While out at my parents' over the weekend, we cut some up for this project. I then took the whole sheet and cut it in half to make it more manageable. I then continued to cut around the containers and to tweak it here and there. No pictures of that process due to it just being a here and there type thing. 

I then grabbed a bunch of the smaller, thinner creek rocks we picked out of my parents' creek weeks ago. Some of the heavier rocks help hold down the liner and hold back the mulch. The thinner, smaller rocks are great for lining the creek and to hide the black liner. 

Due to the slop, I thought it would be fun to overlap some of the rocks to create a waterfall type area. I also put this one on top to cover the rest so that water, when it rains, will go under it. I hope to take some photos of this actually happen at some point. 

Now you can see it coming together more. It's still not done, but definitely pretty close! 

 At the top of the creek, to help hide the downspout, I used this crazy piece of driftwood I've had for years. I'm not sure if we picked this up at my parents' farm or on vacation somewhere. I used to pick up cool pieces for my large fish tank that I've since sold. This one never saw the inside of a tank though and always was in the garden. I moved it from Lily's Garden where it wasn't really a feature and placed it around the rocks and gutter. It fit perfectly! 

I'm not done but you can see the progress. I want to wait until it rains some more to actually mess with the placement of everything I've already done. I have more creek gravel to place in, plus more creek rocks to use to hide the edge of the black liner. 

What do you think? Would you ever make a gutter run off aka dry creek bed aka rain garden? 

{Back Yard} Mulch

This is almost my Secret Garden and I love that it's kind of tucked away. Lily's Garden is so out in the open (as planned) and now that we're focusing on the back yard, it's just for us. And you blog readers.

 Mulch! It adds so much to a garden! Don't you agree? I'm still not done, but I thought I'd show off what's been going on. We borrowed my dad's truck and trailer and bought three scoops of mulch from a local landscaping place. It's much cheaper than buying by the bag, especially for such a large space. Three scoops did just the right amount, not too much and not too little.

The photo above shows my hard work from Thursday morning. I focused on spreading out the mulch for the most part after Doug hauled from our front yard by our wheelbarrow. But here's where I started using more of our recycled items. The hexagon stepping stones were buried in our front yard under massive hedges and a gravel "path" that we got rid of to make room for our sidewalks. I knew, at the time, that I would want to reuse them but I was thinking of painting them for the kids area. Not anymore! I love the look of them by the dog house. I simply started by centering one nearest the dog house and going off from it. 

To the right of the dog house is where our dry creek will be. Some mulch needs to be removed, but I'll deal with that once I actually start making the creek. 

 I'm starting to love this little area. Sorry for the crooked photo, I about fell over due to tripping on the rocks and then hit my head on the trampoline. 

That rock looks small in this photo but I wasn't sure if I could pick it up. I'm guessing it weighs at least 60 pounds. It's not in its permanent spot but pretty close to it.

Looking back towards the deck and dog house. 

Do you mulch your gardens? What do you use? This is "dyed brown mulch" from our local spot. It's great, but due to being dyed, it will fade at some point. In Lily's Garden we have it too and it's been about two years and starting to fade. I think I'll add more to her garden next year to freshen everything up. I also added the mulch to the containers as well to top them off. It's like the icing on the cake!

Sharing at: The Creative Circle - Week 19, Dream. Create. Inspire. Link Party #1

{Back Yard} Details

I introduced our back yard project here and discussed more here. Now I'm here to discuss some of the details!

The largest container is pretty large, giving me plenty of area to plant. I know I over planted but I can always move things around when the fill it up. Plus, I love the look of crowded planted areas, especially cottage style gardens where flowers mix together. I also had plenty of plants, so I put them in here for now.

So far, the container above has Columbine, day lilies, spider wart, Asiatic Lilies, a coneflower from my parents' field, and a small plant I can't remember but it's in the sedum family (I think!). I bought the sedum type flower previously and the rest, minus what came from my parents, were all moved from other parts of our yard.

My ceramic fish now has a place to call home. It's been in our front yard for years and lived primarily on our front porch but I never really liked it there. I do really like the fish though. It'll overlook a dry creek bed that'll start with our gutter (behind the round container) and meander through the containers to the edge of the garden. It'll be lined so when it rains, it'll actually have water in it. I hope the kids like it! And after the large amounts of rain we've had recently, it's already naturally making an edge. So I'll go off of that.

And there's Krypto, enjoying the area. Or at least a bone that I found while cleaning up the area. 

In the photo above:

1. The window goes to our TV room and the steps near it go to nowhere. I'm assuming they did but previous homeowners closed off our back porch. The dogs use it to spy on us when they are outside and I may keep the containers on there but may have to move them due to one large white dog.

2. There are big plans for the tree stump on the right. I can't wait until that's done!

3. The dog house is rarely used but it's nice to have. My dad built it and gave it to us a few years ago. 

4. There is a grass near the corner of the fence that was given to us. It'll grow tall and fill in some of the area, hopefully hiding the neighbor's house. It's actually in a large bucket we fully planted in the ground so it can't spread too much. 

5. I want a rain barrel for the gutter on the brick part of our house. We don't have a water spout on this side of our house so it would help with watering. 

6. Stepping stones will be added on the inside area near the edge so the dogs can do their neighborhood watch program. 

Sharing at: Work it Wednesday No. 101, The Creative Circle - Week 19, Frugal Family Linky

{Back Yard} Containers and Edging

Yesterday I showed you where we started in our back yard makeover and how we've basically ended up with the above photo. So now I'm back to show you some step by step photos of how it actually happened. And give you some background as well. 

For awhile now, I've wanted to do something with our back yard but it's always taken a back seat to other projects. Now that most of our yard is fine, I thought I'd put some focus back to this area of our yard. The biggest issue we have to deal with is that this back yard is home to our two dogs, or it is at least when they are outside. Plus, we have our two kids and I needed this area to be kid and dog friendly. Most gardens, I think, can be both kid and dog friendly but I also didn't want to have to stress out about it, so I kept thinking of container gardening. And not just any containers but large, galvanized containers! I posted here to show a pretty picture of what I kind of had in mind. Now, I could have gone out and spent hundreds on new ones but we live in the middle of farming areas so I figured I could find some. Plus, due to being used for gardening, they didn't need to be able to hold water so holes would be fine. 

Long story short, my parents found the three you see with the help of some people they know. The smallest, square shaped one is actually from my grandmother but the three larger ones are from local farmers.

So, we had the containers but they sat under our deck until recently. Doug and I played around with them one day, getting their placement right and he dug the holes. By digging down some, it gave us dirt to fill them in with (well, some, but that's a different issue) and it gave them some stability. Plus, it allowed us to make sure they were level as our ground clearly is not! 

Now, I could have left them be and we would just have to mow around these but that's just not what I had in mind! I wanted a true little garden area that could be an accent to our pretty bare back yard. 

See the tree stump above? It has some big plans for that area! I can't wait to show you (once it is done!).

My parents had these edging stones leftover from one of their projects and gave us a bunch. We had 40 to start with and have at least 20 more. But this project maybe took 30, so we're good! As shown above, I created an edge to the flower garden area by going off the corner of our patio and going towards the fence. There's a natural line there from the slope of our yard and years of dogs running it that I kind of went with. I actually went a little wider than where the dogs run because there will be stepping stones on the inside of the edge. 

Zoey, my old brindle baby, is showing off the patio. The blue thing above her is our giant trampoline that'll move to the other side of our patio. But the edge is complete and now waiting for mulch. It's not done on the right side due to the next project that'll be happening over there. I'm thinking a trellis may be needed to break up all the white vinyl of our porch siding. What do you think?

Here's an iPhone collage to show you some of the steps so far:

Stay tuned for more about our back yard! And remember, this is about where we are now:

{Back Yard} New Flower Beds

Good Morning Friends!!!

I'm here to show you some of our progress made in our back yard. We started with galvanized containers that my parents picked up from various farmers (they were happy to see them go!) and some blocks my parents gave us. I'll be back later this week with more of some of the step by step pieces of this project as its not done. I'm hoping by Friday, it'll at least be one step closer to being done before we start on a few more projects.

Let's get to it though, ok?

Here's what we basically have right now. There are a few more flowers since this photo was taken but I'll show those later. 

And this is what it was a few weeks ago.

So much better, right?!?! 

Talk about an overgrown, unloved area!! We've spent so much time in other areas of our yard, like the front yard and Lily's Garden, plus the raspberry bed and vegetable garden, that this sad area had been neglected. On the right, near all that tall overgrowth is a tree stump from a tree we had removed a few years ago. Normally I'm all for keeping trees but this one had some damage, was old, and close to our house. After a bad icy winter, we took it down before it took more of our stuff (and our neighbors' stuff) down. 

Instead of a super long post, I'm going to break it down and show some step-by-steps. Like I said, I'm hoping I'll get mulch by Friday to show you that this is pretty much done except for one special area. Then it'll be on to the other areas of our house and yard, because we never seem to just have one project at a time! 

Sharing at: DIY Challenge Party Outdoor Projects, Work it Wednesday No. 101