A neat little landscape project with pictures

[Sam Leon]

This is a single family home in Fort Lauderdale, I have been meaning to do something to the front yard for a while and so a few months ago I had some EXTRA free time I decided to put it to use. I'll share some before, during and after pictures below.

Existing conditions. Narrow walkway in the middle leading to the front door, grass to the right, and a large patch of bald space to the left where grass don't grow under the tree.

Now my motivation is to improve the curb appeal, of course, but I also wanted to experiment with using river rocks to connect and border landscape components.

I wanted to hilight the walkway on both sides, I want to solve the ugly patch of dead space under the tree, and I wanted some structured planter areas, and somehow tie in the two palms to the right side of the house.

Here is a sketch of the plan.

I will create a set of wood borders (inside and outside borders) around the tree to the left. Another pair of borders will be on the right side of the walkway, going north then east, ending in a "FIGURE 8" shape surrounding the two existing palms. On the four corners of the walkway, the borders will be widened to create four planter sections.

The borders are to be 4x4 PT lumber secured to the ground with 36" 1/2" rebars. In between the two borders where you see the light blue shaded areas are to be river rocks, "flowing" into the "pond" with the two palms. The "pink salmon" shaded areas are to be planted and mulched.

First task was to set the level of these borders. I wanted the borders to be at the same elevation instead of sloping down towards the street. One important consideration is I wanted to avoid chewing into the tree roots. So I set the elevation based on minimum digging into the tree on the far left, then set the rest of the borders to match that.

I hired two guys through Craigslist to do most of the heavy lifting and after two days. I got the basic framework done.

After staining the PT lumber to get a darker color.

On the right side, where it lead to the two palms, I wasn't sure what to use as borders. I wanted it to look like the straight borders just widens into the figure 8, but not sure what materials to use. I tried some Home Depot "flexible" wood borders. I didn't like the look at all. So I ripped that out.

I end up getting some reclaimed "half Chicago bricks" and it looks better IMO.

Of course, nothing goes as planned. So while we were digging and trenching, we found the water line between the house shutoff and the meter. Very old galvanized pipe that looks pretty bad shape. Since we had the trencher there, I had another trench dug between the house and the meter, then replaced that 1" line.

Next I laid in some new sprinklers, laid down landscape fabrics between the pair of wood borders, and filled in the river rocks. I put four 16"x16" concrete blocks in the four corners of the walkway to use it as a planter...not sure, may be something round like a small whisky barrels would look better.

Anyways here is the final result after sodding, mulching, cleaning, planting.

My neighbors are very happy with the changes.