Levelling

Once everything was levelled out we created a drainage trench using 'tree socks' filled with course gravel. The grade was modified slightly to drain in this direction. Limestone screening was spread 4-8" thick and levelled with a slight grade to the back corner of the yard.
This layer was watered in and levelled again, then tamped down, watered and levelled, then tamped down...!
The 8' thick steps to the deck were put in place as well as the edge of the terrace step. We brought in a couple loads of soil to fill in the garden at the back edge of the patio and temporarily shored this up with layers of field stone.
We were now ready to set the stone in.

Peeling Sod!

To prepare for the patio, we peeled up all of the remaining sod in the backyard. As you can imagine this turned heads in the neighborhood! Once the sod was gone the area had to be levelled and terraced to accommodate two levels. Originally we had thought to build up the yard to create one large patio area. As it was, with two levels the back of the yard was raised by a foot and a half!

Before any of the patio stone could be put into place, we sifted and picked as many stones out of

the prepared area as possible. We filled over 10, 17-21" grow pots with "gravel". Many thanks to the kids who helped us with this! It was tedious but necessary to prevent any small stones from working their way up during freezing & thawing and cracking any of the larger slabs of stone.

Stone

The next big project was putting in a stone patio to fill up the remainder of the back yard. The plan was to work our way around the side of the house right up to and along the driveway with stone to eliminate all our grass.

Jeff contacted a friend he met during College who did landscaping featuring large stone. Terry took us right to the quarry so we could see the variety of thickness and texture that was available. It was incredibly interesting to see how they peeled the chunks and layers of stone out of the rock terraces with the big loaders.

Once we decided what we wanted, Terry got the truck loaded up and we headed home and made a rock pile in the backyard. (The neighbours were very understanding about us driving between the houses throughout this whole project not to mention the piles of stone everywhere!)

We were surprised by how fragile the pieces of stone actually were. Each large chunk was several 100lbs but could be easily cracked by applying a small amount of pressure on an unsupported edge. The stones ranged in thickness from 2-4 inches and in size from 20inches around up to 9x4.5 feet!

Pictures

Take pictures of everything you do!

Seems pretty straight- forward, doesn't it? The reality is, once you start doing stuff, the camera doesn't always come to mind. I could kick myself for not getting a picture of our kids and their friends with paintbrushes in hand staining our deck boards all in one afternoon. The job should have taken 2 days but with so many brushes on the go...voila! Done before supper. And not one picture!

The point is, take lots of pictures even if you don't use them. It's the ones you don't take you're going to miss and with a digital camera you can

ditch anything you don't want to keep, no charge!

Keep a scrapbook of what you have accomp- lished. It doesn't have to be elaborate. If you are into formal scrapbooking, there is alot to choose from out there to compliment a gardening theme. If you're not...keep a simple photo album in chronological order (fill it as you take 'em). Friends and family like to see how you did it!

The Deck

Our backyard is 52 feet wide and 25 feet deep. If you don't want to cut grass you soon realize you have to fill the space with something! Our deck is 20 feet wide and 22 feet deep, roughly half the yard.
My Dad drove up on a Thursday in late June with his truck and trailer full of white cedar boards. All of this wood had been harvested during the winter from his own woodlot and cut on his portable sawmill in the spring.
We started unloading and staining the boards in the early afternoon. As the kids came home from school, they joined the staining assembly line and half a dozen of their friends tagged along for the fun. By 7pm we had stained every board at least once and paid off the workers with ice cream!
Jeff took friday off and he and Dad finished leveling the deck blocks on patio stones and started constructing. They weathered some dark clouds and worked through a measuring conundrum but everything was finished and cleaned up by Saturday afternoon and Dad took off home early!
In addition to decreasing the use of the lawnmower, the size of the deck eliminated the two and a half foot altitude drop from the back door to the back of the property! We now had a level, 400 square foot, outdoor living/dining

room.
We use the deck almost every day. It's wonderful just to sit outside in the

morning before work and relax with a cup of tea before the mayhem begins.

Gardens in Planters

The first spring was strange for me. No perennials coming up...not even a bed to dig in . Jeff was a little more comfortable with this and brought home plenty of hardy annuals, sedums and forced bulbs to fill urns and planters. We stuffed the pots of perennials and lilies from my old place in the crevasses of our temporary rock pile and created an instant no dig garden. Jeff brought home two cracked concrete bird baths, drilled holes around the bottom of the bowls and we filled them with a variety of sedums and succulants. Almost anything that will hold soil can be used as a planter as long as the water can drain out slowly. Pansies and osteospurnum are hardy annuals with a great

range of color. After their peak we replant them in one- and two-gallon pots and group them together around urns, bigger pots or in bare corners of the garden. They will last all summer if you remember to water them!

Garden Ideas

House and gardening magazines are a good place to look for ideas. You can start a subscription or read them at the library. I found two years worth of a house & gardening magazine at a yard sale for $1.00! They were a couple of years old but the info & ideas were still good. Visit magazine websites and search their archives, you'll find all kinds of good stuff!

Take pictures of gardens and structures you like. Cut pictures out of magazines. Make lists or take pictures at garden centers and shows. Keep everything together in a book or folder and keep looking at it and adding to it. You don't have to use all of these ideas but they'll give you options as you decide how you want your garden to look. I have no less than 8 pictures of archways and gates...none of which we used! Think about how some of the structural stuff will look in the winter covered in snow or sticking out of it!

Create a list of plants you like. These can be researched in books or online. Find out if they require special nutrients, sun or shade and what level of watering they need. This will help decide where they should go in the garden or whether they are suitable at all. You can also find out if they are poisonous or irritants (especially important if you have young children or pets).

Even after you decide what you want in your garden, keep collecting. We still find new plants and ideas every season, you will too!

Planning the Garden

When we moved to this property in November 2005 we both left much larger yards with gardens each of us had been developing for more than a decade. Our biggest challenge designing this smaller yard would be amalgamating two different styles of gardening. Jeff primarily used tropicals and annuals creating a garden that changed every year and I used perennials extensively to create a low maintenance garden I could extend every year. The new yard was like having a brand new sketchbook and a 60 pack of color pencils! A lot of time was spent making diagrams of how we thought the yard would look. Eventually, we took the actual survey of the property and made a proper scale drawing.** By late winter we had a very good idea of what we wanted out of our new yard. A big deck, a stone patio, stone pathways and no grass! The deck would be first and we talked to my Dad about getting the cedar we would need from him and whether he would be available to build it. We tramped out the shape of the proposed deck in the snow covered backyard so he could see what we wanted it to look like. His comment..."that's a big deck!"
So, the journey began!

** Later on, a copy of this drawing can be used to map out plantings so, come spring time, late growing perennials or previously planted bulbs don't get accidentally dug up. It will also help keep a record of plants that don't come up again!

Getting Started

This is the story of how we created an Oasis on our small wedge shaped suburban lot in central Ontario. We started in the spring of 2006. The original plan has been altered many times over the past three years and continues to evolve. We have done most of the work ourselves except where professional help was needed and owe many thanks to friends and family who assisted in our efforts. All will be mentioned and thanked as we proceed with our online scrapbook! We hope you enjoy the story as much as we enjoyed creating it! Georgie & Jeff