There was always something about our back yard that kind of annoyed me. While I certainly appreciated the general concept of what our prior owners were attempting to achieve – an eclectic mix of water (i.e., the swimming pool), stone, sand (the “beach” where our Tiki bar now sits), patio, and grass, to me it was all just a bit much and a little crowded. Of course, I didn’t help much by plating a bunch of flowering bushes along the cement wall, but that wasn’t the problem.

The problem was the shape of the lawn they designed. Rather than making a nice clean shape that allowed a sufficient amount of separation between everything, the lawn kind of snaked its way too close to the west and south walls, and in a shape that made it virtually impossible for the sprinklers to cover the various tight corners. The result: too many sprinkler heads and too many bare spots that never got enough water to sustain grass.

I had contemplated a number of solutions, from synthetic lawn (at $3,500 too expensive) to various grasses and coverage like dichondra (still too many bare spots), but in the end I knew the only real solution was to reshape the lawn. I called Daniel from Hawkeye Landscaping, and he was glad to take on the job – after all, we’d been partners in crime with my regular guy Carmelo forever futzing with the sprinklers and sprinkler heads. He came out, agreed with what I wanted to do, and showed up the next day with the same guy who had helped redesign our east lawn five years ago.

To get an idea of what I’m talking about, here are a few pictures I took before the redesign. The first looking south from the patio:

The second looking west from the Tiki bar deck:

As you can see from both pics, the lawn and its brick border meander all over the place without any appreciable rhyme nor reason. Being a kind of self-proclaimed minimalist, I’ve become a big fan of open space and clean lines. It took Daniel and I only about ten minutes to plan the redesign, and I think you can appreciate the results. First, the view south from the patio:

Notice how the lawn border now extends out from the Tiki bar deck, creating an entirely different feel from the patio and the stone. Looking west, the lawn and its border have been pulled away both from the large Texas sage and the west wall, and that pesky dead area that could never retain grass is now covered with rock:

Daniel was much pleased with results after the work was completed. As he said, you now get the sense of the back yard being able to “breathe”, with clear distinctions between lawn, stone, and patio. There is also now a connection between the Tiki bar deck and the lawn, and once the dichondra really comes in – something that will be much easier to achieve with the new shape and arrangement of sprinkler heads – it’ll have the feeling of the Tiki bar being afloat on a sea of emerald green. Not to mention the fact that between the dichondra and the more efficient watering system I’ll also be using less water.

I’m kind of thinking that stone area between the lawn and the pool deck would be a great place for a barbecue if those two red yuccas were to be pulled up, but that’s for future consideration. I’m pretty stoked about the redesign and Tracey is too.

Now back to our regular programming. 🙂