When we bought our house, the fact that it was brand new gave us an opportunity to make a lot of decisions about it, especially when it came to the yard. I am now 2 growing seasons into it and I decided that it was time to start documenting what I had planted and where it was located. We probably won’t be in this house forever, so I thought it might be appreciated by the next owner. Here is a copy of that initial hand drawn plan that I did as the house was being built:
The most obvious omission on this plan is the fact that none of the plants are labeled. If I was preparing a plan like this for a client, every plant would be labeled. For our house, I basically used this as an initial concept and I’ve been “winging it” ever since. The only things that are pretty much like the plan are the sod lines and the patio and garden locations.
Plant selection for our yard has been heavily influenced by a couple things: 1) Plants donated by one of the CFO’s co-workers and 2) plants that catch the CFO’s eye when we are roaming through one of the many local nurseries. She identifies a plant that she would like to add and then I figure out the possible locations where it can be integrated into our yard. I never know what is going to gain favor with her, so there is no sense in labeling the plan. I refer to this process as design by committee.
I took the plan to work so that I could scan it and start tracing it in autocad. It will be a lot easier to label the plants in cad, even if the drawing won’t have the same hand drawn feeling to it that my sketch did. The other item that is missing from the initial plan is the dry creek bed that I built to handle the rain water from our uphill neighbors. Since I have no idea where I actually built it, I decided to pull the house up on goggle maps and use that image as a basis for tracing the dry creek bed. I knew that they had an image from last summer, you can see it below:
To my surprise, they had also flown over the neighborhood this past summer and shot the images at an angle. Unfortunately, this photo was taken at the height of the lawn’s summer dormancy (because I am too cheap to spend money on water for the yard [and I think heavily irrigating lawn is wasteful]), so it doesn’t look that great. I wish they would shoot it now, as the grass has greened back up. Who do I need to talk to at google to discuss scheduling their fly overs?!
The two green spots in the rear yard are where I place the sprinkler to do my once every 2 weeks “keep the grass roots alive” watering that I do. I knew that area was staying green, but had no idea how funny it would look from the air! I think that the dry creek bed is more "curvy" in person, these shots don't seem to show it very well. The photos also don't show the plants that we have planted very well, I'll have to take some photos around the yard before everything goes dormant for the winter. You can't really make out the swath of native grasses that has come in pretty well in the rear mulch area, hopefully they will show better the next time they fly over the house. Temperatures dropped into the high 30's last night and the sun is setting earlier and earlier... here comes winter!
Your yard looks cool. I love looking at those shots. Would defiantly like to see close up shots of your flower beds and the natural grasses before they go dormant. Which sounds like it will be very soon. Could use some suggestions on some native plants for our "lower 40" we cleared out the underbrush and small trees and found lots of ferns who knew? Would like to add some more plants but don't know what...suggestions?
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