It isn't everyday that we get to see a house and a yard go through such a transformation, but for this client, changing the landscape was essential to drawing the eye into the reframing of the house. The house sits down in the yard quite a bit below street level. In order to help prevent flooding and to create a natural water friendly environment, we created a tiered, winding, and sloped pathway which brings you to the front door of the home. The pathway is gravel, a permeable surface, to ensure maximum drainage from street level to the level of the house. This river like effect allows the rainfall to naturally seep into the ground, rather than rushing down a hard surface such as the previous sidewalk.
We used flagstone on the steps and a complementary paver for the patio outside of the front door. Recycled logs and boulders provide the retaining walls for the tiered beds, and a small flagstone pathway creates a walkway from the sidewalk. We also tucked a small raingarden into the southwest corner of the yard which will provide catchment and further drainage from the tiered raised beds. Our clients are thrilled! I spoke to them briefly when I stopped by to photograph the new digs and they said that it was a lovely space to spend time in. They mentioned that people walking past often stop by to admire the design, and whenever friends or family come round the house they comment on just how nice it is. I'm not sure we can do much better than that. Here is a fun one! We just completed this excellent addition to a chain link fence. We are using recycled bike wheel frames to create an arbor of sorts that will provide a bit more privacy between the neighbors' yards. It also adds an element of whimsy to an otherwise adorable little backyard garden. The owners love to entertain and have cocktail parties, and this bike wheel fence will be a definite conversation piece! We also retooled the stairs leading up into the garage and back garden area. We are still working on a few last minute touches, but it is coming together nicely!
Talk about a cute little front yard. These clients were looking to maximize their garden space, while adding interest through the use of arbors. We do so love to build arbors. The arbor running along the side of the house is actually an arborduct. It houses the pipes running from the gutters of the home into the raingarden, which will filter the roof runoff before heading into the Puget Sound.
The second arbor is simply to provide a bit of architectural interest to the front yard while mimicking the shape of the windows on the house, and providing a bit of screening from the neighbors. For both arbors, we used the same stain as the garage door, which ties the look of the house and the garden together nicely. Soon we will be returning to finish out the pathways leading up to the house, and from the house to the garage. A raingarden is a fantastic addition to a landscape, and can be customized to fit your needs, your wants, and your budget. Whether you want a small streambed, shallow pool, or a simple swale, these features will reduce toxic roof runoff into the side sewer and help protect our valuable Puget Sound. It's a new year, and those of us at Stone Soup Gardens are right back at it. Before the end of last year we started on a challenging project involving a concrete backyard. The previous owner of our client's home put in a basketball court in the backyard, great for some, but not great if you are a lover of gardening or green space. In December we began jackhammering out the concrete and setting it aside. This is hard work on the body, so it was great to be able to finish that task and have a nice break over the holidays. Here are a few before pictures to give you an idea of what we were facing. Once the jackhammering began, things got messy and loud quick! We started by pulling out large chunks of concrete where the growing space would be, and set aside those pieces to use as a retaining wall around the raised beds. We also carved out a winding concrete path from the existing concrete pad rather than having an added expense of installing a walkway. Here's a few images of us playing with power tools. Now that the holidays are over, it's back to work! This week we are working on building out the raised bed area, as well as continuing to pull out concrete, installing grass, and sculpting the pathways. We've even planted a tree. It's shaping up to be a lovely space. Next, we'll be installing a small swale to catch the roof runoff in the front of the house, doing a bit of planting when the weather is more predictable, and finishing up with some lovely touches in the back. It will be a wonderful garden retreat once finished. Stay tuned for more images!
As many of you may know, I teach about mushrooms. Foraging them, how to find them, growing them, and eating them. Recently, I've done a couple of classes on mushrooms, and have had a great response from clients who would like mushroom patches of their own. Often times in landscaping, there is that awkward space under the stairs, or a completely shady corner where nothing grows. Well, today is the day, folks. Stone Soup Gardens has been doing mushroom patches galore the last month or so, and we are thrilled to see such an abundance of soon-to-be-shrooms! One project that I'm proud to share is in the Columbia City neighborhood, not far from my own awesome patch. These clients are near and dear to me because of their deep love of all things permaculture. Our fabulous designer, Jacqueline Kramer of Design Collaborators, created an amazing space full of northwest edibles. We built them a lovely hugelcultur bed, an herb spiral, and a lovely backyard patio with steps down to a gravel gathering space. We also inoculated an area under the stairs with turkey tail mushrooms, put birch bolete spores under the birch tree in the front yard, and added a sawdust patch for our clients to do their own experiments in mushroom cultivation. In addition to all that wonderfulness, we were able to use all the materials we pulled out of the yard, to build the yard back up! This includes logs, branches, and sod for soil building for the hugelcultur bed. The best kind of recycling! The clients also had a mushroom class in their own yard so that they would know how to tend their new mushroom patches, what to look for when harvesting, how to harvest, and how to prepare the beds for winter. Are you interested in growing mushrooms? Do you want to learn more about hugelcultur beds and soil building? Contact Stone Soup Gardens today. We would love to show you all the wonderful joys of our northwest climate! Stone Soup Gardens has truly awesome clients. Every so often we like to check back in and see how their gardens are growing. One of our clients, who also happens to be a neighbor, has been consistently adding improvements to their garden year after year. We still have a few projects to go, including adding a couple of railings, finishing up the stairs, and planting out a few more areas. The improvements have been enormous, and it is wonderful to see the place taking shape. For a look back at the project over the last year, check out the blog posts HERE and HERE. Stone work is something we find ourselves doing more and more often here at Stone Soup Gardens. From retaining walls, to rockeries, to patios, we do our best to fit our client's needs with something beautiful, long lasting, and creative. One such project is in the Mt. Baker neighborhood. Our client was in the process of putting on a new deck, and wanted to create a more useable space in their backyard. While the yard is fairly small and rectangular, it had a good deal of space for a couple of raised beds, a nice area for a hummingbird habitat, and the perfect spot under the stairs for a mushroom patch. We installed two beautiful raised beds with extended planks for outdoor seating. Once those were completed we started on the patio. Since the backyard is generally in shade, the client's wanted something permeable but walkable during our long wet winters. The client had a decent pile of used bricks from a previous project, so we rounded up a selection of used brick from our local salvage store to complement the design. The client also asked that we make room for a lovely Buddha statue and fountain, which we also installed, to create a quiet meditative place that will flower and bloom during the year. We are still putting the finishing touches on the place now, but I think it will be a wonderful garden retreat for our clients in the years to come! At the end of last year, Stone Soup Gardens had the pleasure of being chosen to create new urbanite retaining walls at the Judkins Park P-Patch. The walls were part of a larger vision the community and the Department of Neighborhoods had for the P-Patch, and they wanted someone skilled with using recycled materials for the job. (See previous post HERE.) This year, the Department of Neighborhoods and the folks at the P-Patch came back and asked us to install a community patio space, as well as a space for ADA accessible raised garden beds at the Norman St entrance to the P-Patch. We've been busy for the last week working on this project, and we are excited to share with you how things are shaping up! Take a look below to see the newly laid patio space, and the finishing of our retaining walls. Next up, ground cover installation and a hand-made inlay welcoming you to Judkins P-Patch. Check back, there are more photos to come! Sometimes we get to work on a really great project that includes a multi-diversity of purposes. Recently, we've been working in Columbia City on a backyard that was screaming for a make-over. The client for this project is legally blind, and asked that we provide a design that incorporated a scent garden, edible natives, as well as plants that attract hummingbirds and other wildlife to the backyard. In order to realize her ideas, as well as making the yard accessible to her, we had to completely regrade the slope of the yard to provide better access points, as well as pathways through the space. Once the patio was complete, we began planting out the garden spaces. We chose a number of specific native and edible plants to attract hummingbirds for year round foraging, including Weiglia, Red Flowering Currant, and Sarcococca. As a personal favorite, we included a number of human edibles too, including Blueberry, Huckleberry, Salal, and many herb varieties. This will not only provide foraging for our client, but delicious smells from the herbs, and a great burst of color during the fall! Another important factor for our client was being able to differentiate between all of the different spaces in the garden. For this we incorporated gravel, moss, and woodchip areas underfoot for the walking experience. We used several different plants that have a nice texture such as lambs ear and Juncus Spiralis. To help our client locate specific regions in the garden, we put up different garden chimes around that will help her locate not only by sound, but also by touch, what can be found in that area. Currently, we are installing a number of railings to help our client navigate with ease through each space. Check back soon for more photos as we complete the backyard and start on a rain garden for the front yard! Every so often we get to do a really awesome project that benefits the community at large, rather than just a single home in the neighborhood. Recently we completed a new set of stairs and a short wall for the Judkins Park P-patch. It was a great project, and will be a nice feature as they continue to invigorate the existing space. From the Judkins Park Website: "Judkins has a lot of natural habitat, including as all natives planting in the parking strip. There's a small pond, wetland habitat as well. The borders are planted richly with additional northwest natives and beneficial flowers and herbs. Judkins is rare, it's permanently preserved for community gardening! |
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