Transformations: Back Yard

Transformations: Back Yard
Front Yard | Back Yard| Bali | Drycreek Valley | Woods behind the Back Fence

GENERAL RENOVATIONS

Backyard Lawn Removal View Slideshow
After having had my last couple of yards professionally landscaped, I decided to try to design the yard at the new house myself when I moved in at the tail-end of 2006. At that time the yard was a blank slate, consisting almost exclusively of a large Bermuda grass lawn in front, back, and side. My first task was to figure out how to walk around, which resulted in the first set of paths in the yard (see next section). With the pathways roughed out, I then marked off what I thought might be garden beds and began killing the grass through a method known as sheet mulching. This technique involves layering sheets of cardboard and compost over turf as a way to smother it, and then building garden beds on top of the cardboard/mulch layer. Because Bermuda grass refuses to die, I had to follow up with poison-ivy-and-tough-brush-grade Roundup for a couple of years. The very last remnant of lawn was smothered in 2017, eventually replaced by The Temple.

Backyard Walkways: Original & Advanced View Slideshow: Original | View Slideshow: Advanced
The backyard was initially a great expanse of Bermuda grass bordered by bare, unplanted areas on all four sides. I knew that I wanted as little lawn as possible and so began to eradicate the lawn and create pathways around the yard shortly after I moved in. My design was not planned in any way. Rather, I first determined how to get around the yard by walking around among gates and doorways--a total of 6 within the fenced-in area behind the house, 4 leading from the yard through the fence to the outer areas, and 2 providing entry to the house (via the deck and screened-in porch). By walking around I was able to rough out where pathways might be installed that were both direct and amenable to a curvilinear design. I marked these walkways with fallen limbs from the woods, which allowed me to reconfigure them as I got a better sense of how I'd use the terrain.

The pathways remained grassy at first as I covered what were to become garden beds with many layers of cardboard and whatever fallen limbs and other organic debris I could get my hands on while recovering from the knee surgery I required almost immediately after the move in December, 2006. Once the pathways were laid out, I learned that many were simply too mucky to serve as effective walkways and so looked into paving those nearest the house. I contracted with Harvey Chandler of First Impressions to do the installation. After he put in one section and it looked great, I asked Harvey back to put in another section. I went through this process several more times until all of the major walkways in the back were paved. In 2012 Sacred Gardens installed additional permanent walkways, this time with flagstones embedded in concrete instead of pavers; and in 2019 Unique Paver Installations added a final walkway in conjunction with the staircases installed to access The Temple.

WATERSHED TERRACES

The Watershed Terraces get their name from their position down the center of the back yard, which is where an elevation produces runoff to both sides, serving as my yard's Great Divide. The terraces in a sense eradicate the watershed effect in that they are designed to retain water by providing flat, rather than sloped, surfaces. They were all constructed from 2016-2019, using stones from either my property or loads of sinkhole fill that I ordered to fill the terraces. The stones serve as a facade, behind which are vertical foundations of concrete blocks, with gravel at the bottom for drainage as a safeguard against buckling. In one case, The Temple, the entire vertical foundation is made of gravel and broken bricks from the construction of new houses in the neighborhood, all of which I hauled via wheelbarrow from the sites to the back (with owners' permission of course). In addition to the dirt, the terraces were initially filled with lots of fallen timber, pruned branches, kitchen scraps, and any other organic matter that came my way during construction.

In what follows, I describe the terraces in descending order, starting with the top (high end) of the back and moving in order to the low end.

Overall Watershed Terrace Gallery #1: In-Process Slide Show
Overall Watershed Terrace Gallery #2: Near Completion July 2019 Slide Show

Shaman's Terrace View Slideshow
The area to the left of the Shaman was initially a problem because it involved a steep slope that, no matter how well or often I amended it, always washed away. This problem was addressed in summer 2010 through a stone terrace that Harvey installed, enabling me to plant the area with quince and rose of sharon, punctuated with purple heart and ice plant. Behind them, along the fence extending all the way to the end of the Shaman's Terrace, is an evergreen screen composed of wax myrtles, a boxwood, osmanthus, Blue Princess Holly, Nellie R. Stevens Holly, Steeds Holly, Foster Holly, a loropetalum, and possibly other hollies. In 2012 Sacred Gardens installed a permanent walkway between the Shaman's Terrace and the Dinosaur Terrace.

Dinosaur Terrace View Slideshow
The Dinosaur Terrace is an elevated plot that is thin at one end, much thicker in the middle, and thin again at the far end. Originally it was, like the rest of the back yard, on a slope. At first I planted it with gold mound and Anthony Waterer spirea because 1) I had a lot of them from the old yard, and 2) they are very hardy and could take the sun and runoff in that area. I eventually elevated it and enclosed it with a stone wall, backed by stacks of concrete chunks. That required me to remove all the plants and then reinstall them. The spirea were consolidated in the thick middle, with the gold mounds placed ina semi-circle around a cluster of Anthony Waterers. I planted one thin end with Asian lilies, Autumn Joy sedum, and spiderwort; and astilbe, purple heart, ice plant, dianthus and an asian vine groundcover on the other. At the very end, closest to the house, is a small section where a paperbark maple sits amidst variegated liriope, rain lilies, and purple shamrocks, and is considered more part of the Garden Gate Garden than the Dinosaur Terrace, in spite of its location within the structure. The gold mound spirea turns a gorgeous color in fall and early winter, then returns to chartreuse a few months later. In summer it fills out quite nicely.

Royal Terrace View Slideshow
This terrace gets its name from the purple, gold, and white flower combinations that populate it. The area began as an expanse of lawn off one of the pathways I had roughed out in front of the Shaman, with a few transplants from the old house installed just to give it some initial definition and sheet mulching to kill the grass. It was originally sloped, like the rest of the yard, but I terraced it in a manner similar to the other backyard terraces, with a concrete block interior foundation wall and a stone exterior. The contents of this terrace have changed often. It has settled as a major setting for variegated canna lilies with yellow flowers, with white hydrangeas at two opposing corners, a small lungwort accompanying one; and with goldenrod and Stoke's aster providing purple and yellow color for summer and fall.

El Centro View Slideshow
El Centro is named after the city center of Guadalajara, Mexico, where I have a working relationship with the University of Guadalajara. It has gone through a number of changes. Originally it was a section of Bermuda grass on a slope. Eventually I raised it into a terrace with stone walls, backed by a vertical concrete block foundation. After experimenting with some plant combinations, in 2019 I got it settled with 3 varieties of spirea, purple irises of indeterminate type (a gift), tall garden phlox, lavender, Russian sage, and spiderwort. The final touch was a patio in the center, accessible from the top side where the wall is lowest.

The Temple View Slideshow
The Temple has a gravel-and-construction-rubble interior foundation rather than concrete blocks, all salvaged from the construction sites of new homes in the neighborhood. It abuts the pergola on the low end. To provide access and the best visuals from beneath the pergola, I had a stone staircase installed at the low end by Unique Paver Installations, providing a walkway that goes to the high end, and has a seating area. The big staircase leading down to the pergola makes it look like an ancient temple, ergo the name. Plants include peonies, sedum, coneflowers, magic carpet spirea, butterfly bush, blanket flower, sneezeweed, homestead purple verbena, and low-growing purple sages.

T3: Upper View Slideshow
The T3: Upper Terrace is a 3-level terrace between the Porch/Grassy Knoll and the Temple. It includes a Butterflies Japanese maple that is part of a set of 3 such trees, with the other two completing a small triangle and located in the Porch garden and Pergola Terrace; and a Golden Thread Leaf False cypress, a favorite plant of my mother's and so a favorite of mine. There's also a cestrum, which gets cut back annually. At ground level are black and blue sage surrounding the cestrum.

T3: Lower View Slideshow
The T3: Lower Terrace is a triangular area resting among the Temple, Meadow, and Spinner Park. The top tier includes a weeping Japanese Maple and Autumn Sage; the middle tier is planted with a wide variety of perenniels; and the bottom tier is planted with a fountain grass, Pennisetum alopecuroides "Hameln."

Pergola View Slideshow
The pergola began as a place in the Bermuda lawn, off a roughed out walkway, where I put some lawn chairs. It was in the path of one of the walkways that Harvey built. Harvey did the stonework and built the pergola with help from my neighbor Jim, who is retired and seemed interested in doing a cool job. After it was complete, I planted it with Bignonia "Tangerine Dream" cross vine, which took a few years to grow to the top and cover the slats. It's evergreen in the winter and in the spring sprouts abundant orange flowers much beloved by hummingbirds and other flute-flower feeders. The only other plantings are 2 cast iron pots filled with painted Japanese ferns. In 2019, perhaps as a result of a collision during the construction of The Temple staircase, the pergola began to sag and fall, and was propped up before being torn down in 2020 and replaced with a new fiberglass structure.

Pergola Terrace View Slideshow
The Pergola Terrace is the area at the low end of the back yard, circumscribed by the walkway that intersects the Pergola and the lower border fence, extending to the Spinner Park on the left as you face it. This area was like the rest of the low end of the back in that it took on all the runoff from the watershed and from the house. It initially had terrible drainage problems because all the water from that half of the back yard eventually drained out the lower corner. I solved this problem by building a two-level terrace, later expanded to three levels, in this area so that the water would level out rather than rushing through the beds, and then planted them so that they would hold the soil even with moving water.

The Pergola Terrace includes a whirling butterflies Japanese maple as part of a trio straddling three different beds. It also had major problems with weeds, which I resolved through sheet-mulching. I originally planted bottlebrush buckeyes, near the gate closest to the house, but they outgrew their space and I moved them all outside the fence where they now form a giant colony beyond the back fence. Their removal allowed me to install another terrace just off the walkway, now planted with deutzia, nandinas, weigelia, green shamrocks, dwarf Solomon's seal, and Walker's low catmint. Behind them there's a dawn redwood, some native trees (maple, etc.), loropetalums, and azaleas. In 2012 I put in a set of catchbasins to help retain water flowing downhill from the walkway that provides the perimeter for the Grassy Knoll, and expelled by the downspout that carries off rainwater from the ceiling above The Porch.

PERIMETER: HOUSE SIDE

The Watershed Terraces provide what I refer to here as two perimeters that extend from the top of the yard to the bottom. This one borders the house and is separated from the Watershed Terraces by a walkway.

Garden Gate Garden View Slideshow
The Garden Gate Garden encompasses the area on both sides of the gate between the driveway and back yard. In the back it includes five areas:

The largest plot consists of a stone patio and seating area, with the bulldog statue on guard. The planting is relatively simple, with a groundcover mix of variagated liriope and purple shamrock, plus a variegated hosta. There are two oakleaf hydrangea shrubs at the base of a native maple tree. Along the fence, providing shelter and a screen, are a set of 3 camellias and anise.

Across the path, and hugging the house, is a narrow strip that extends the theme of purple shamrock at the base. The shrubs are all variegated acubas. There is also a sasanqua camellia growing through the fence and up the side of the house, part of a set of camellias (most framing the garage) that I'm espaliering up the side of the house and around the garage.

The third area is actually part of the Grassy Knoll, although before it turns downhill and around the deck corner. It's got a base of liriope and mums, and an oakleaf hydrangea, with a sasanqua camellia espalliered up a small lattice along the deck.

Area #4 is on the driveway side, where there's a bed of bay harbor nandinas beneath the basketball hoop, and more sasanqua camellias espalliered up the side of the house.

The final area is behind the patio and consists of a drycreek. The water that runs straight down the driveway is joined by water that runs off the roof and through a drainpipe from the garage, and also from water that drains downhill from the neighbor's yard and the hill (which later became the driveway extension). After a number of adjustments, the water now drops into a catchbasin and goes underground, where a perforated pipe distributes it subterraneanously across the top of the backyard, with the excess from big rains deposited outside the fence and into the beds of the Pieris Porch.

Grassy Knoll View Slideshow
The Grassy Knoll refers to the area just off the back deck, enclosed by a major walkway in a half-moon shape. It was originally quite a mud pit, apparently landscaped to be a large, curved planting bed but never planted or well-amended, and always steeply sloped and thus difficult to plant and maintain. Any amendments not knitted to the soil by plant roots washed away at the first opportunity, leaving it one giant mudpie during the wet season and a hard brick in the dry season. There was also a drainage problem that caused a basement flood, ultimately diagnosed as a gutter problem that had to be repaired by running a drainage pipe from the third-floor roof gutter all the way to below the deck and into the first drainage pit I dug into the compacted red clay we call soil in Georgia.

The problem of erosion remained critical. The first order of business was to sheet-mulch the area, although more as a weed barrier than a grass killer as was the case throughout the rest of the back yard. I then covered the cardboard with a thick layer of chipped wood, much of it from the logs that had been holding the sheet-mulching in place. After experimenting with a variety of groundcovers, I found that liriope served the purpose of keeping weeds down, looking nice, and knitting the top layer of soil into a low-erosion slope. Concurrent with this effort, I took a pick ax and dug the entire hill down about 18 inches through rock-hard red clay and amended it with shredded paper. I lucked into a fabulous yellow Japanese magnolia tree that provided the perfect sense of balance to the bed. A number of shrubs have come and gone, and the survivors include 3 ogon spireas, 2 lilacs (one Miss Kim, the other indeterminate), and 5 blueberry bushes that now yield endless quantities of berries in June. The Grassy Knoll includes two art pieces: the Question Mark Statue, and a spinning piece that hangs from the magnolia tree.

The Porch beneath the Deck View Slideshow
When I moved in, the area below the deck consisted of a concrete slab with a slatted roof overhead (i.e., the deck off the back of the house) that rainwater easily poured through between the slats. The retaining wall that kept the back yard clay from spilling in was a set of wooden 4x4's stacked at varying lengths, but not enough to keep water from rushing down into the porch during heavy storms. To make the deck useful in wet weather, I had underdecking installed, which is a way to put a ceiling beneath the deck that runs off rainwater into a drainage pipe and keeps the deck relatively moisture-free. Magnolia Underdeck Finishing installed the system and also screened in the porch.

Harvey took out the wooden retaining wall and built a new concrete wall to accomodate the screening, and a contractor re-did flooring so that it remained concrete but appeared to be tiled. From there I put in a set of containers planted with hostas and ferns, very low-maintenance and perennial. Meanwhile, the area just outside the porch entry evolved as well. Initially it was just a mud patch. As part of the larger project to plant evergreens around the fence border, I installed the tea olive osmanthus shrubs that now surround the gate, and black mondo grass in 2012, accompanied by a whirling butterflies Japanese maple as part of a trio in the gardens at the lower end of the back yard. The art in this garden is a 3-piece dragon that appears to be swimming in the mondo grass.

PERIMETER: FENCE SIDE

The other perimeter to the Watershed Terraces is on the far side, between the long walkway connecting the gates and the fence. There are two exceptions to this demarcation. The Shaman's Park includes three beds. The Fence Side Perimeter also includes a terrace on the low end, running the whole length of the perimeter, to flatten out the slope and reduce runoff. The following listing begins at the high end of the back and descends to the low end.

Shaman's Park View Slideshow
The Shaman's Park extends from the Shaman to the corner, and then dowhill to the seating area toward the middle of the slope. It includes a second seating area in the corner. Three raised beds are planted for three consecutive bloom seasons. The daffodils appear in January and bloom through April. The foliage then dies back (it requires sun to generate blooms the following year so can't be cut) as the daylilies come in, starting to bloom in May. Meanwhile, dinner-plate hibiscus start growing and bloom from midsummer to fall.

Behind the beds, along the fence, is a wall of large evergreen shrubs of many kinds: hollies, wax myrtle, cletyeras, and winter honeysuckle, plus a large cypress tree in the corner. Between this border and the beds I've added a lower shrub layer of one gardenia, one mountain laurel, and either Canyon Creek or Kaleidescope Abelia the rest of the way. Behind the seating area in the corner, and between the paths and the gate at the fence, I installed a set of cleyeras on each side of the walkway to form walls and a canopy to provide a tunnel-like experience for the transition from yard to woods.

Meadow View Slideshow
From its humble roots as a Bermuda lawn, the meadow developed through a series of stages. First it was sheetmulched and then covered with wood chips. After its initial planting with various perennials bought at season-end sales, it settled into its current status as a mass of yarrow (achillea), which is technically a perennial yet in Georgia is an evergreen groundcover that has a feathery appearance in the winter and then bursts into flower in early spring. This area also houses tall (10+ feet) red and white hibiscus plants that flower in late summer. There are three trees planted in this area: a 'Leonard Messel' Magnolia, a lion's head Japanese maple, and a Bloodgood Japanese maple.

Spinner Park View Slideshow
The area between the Lower Pergola Terrace and gate at the low end of the back is the Spinner Park, named after the large spinning wind sculpture made by Lyman Whitaker. At the very back, this area is bordered with evergreen shrubs: hollies, cleyeras, and wax myrtle from the gate to the corner, and loropetalum across the lowest end. In front of them are azaleas, with trees including a Japanese maple, pink dogwood,a bigleaf magnolia, gardenias, plus a large swath of black-eyed susans.