Old House Garden - Before and After

This is a photo record of work that has been done in the back yard of our 1912 house since we purchased it five years ago. There are some before pictures (as it was in the beginning) through the progression of what it is today.

I am not a landscape designer although I have helped many of my clients design their yards. It's because I see yards as rooms - the way a designer does. The yard you are looking at is approx. 67 feet wide and 140 feet in length.

Please contact me via email if you have any questions. Click here to contact me : Fromtimespast

We bought the house in the middle of December. The door to the little shed is frozen solid in the ice.	This was it for a back step. It was highly dangerous as you can imagine. No rails and 3 1/2 feet off the ground!
This is a picture of the old garage. The last owners painted it green and white which looked ok. Note the tall bush to the right of the window. Its (lilac tree) roots were growing in between the walls.	This was awful. Rather than kill the quack grass the previous owners roto-tilled the weeds - and then let them grow all over again. Have you ever tried mowing between ruts?
The house as it was sold to the previous owners. The hedge was pretty much dead when we bought the house so we had them removed.	The garage was lower than the alley and the neighbor's yard so all the melting snow flooded the garage and yard - and then froze solid. What a mess!
The transformation begins. The top foot of soil and quack grass was removed and replaced. 7 truckloads of topsoil were brought in to level the yard. A gazebo was built. Perennials planted.	This is our new garage - it looks like the old one but it's a bit bigger. We built a small 8 x 15 foot deck knowing it's temporary. We put in sidewalk blocks interspersed with bricks.
This is the side yard when the potting shed was still there. We planted more flowers and the yard was starting to shape up nicely.	Last year we had a 12X22 foot deck built next to the garage and purchased a screened room. It was making good use of a part of the yard that was never used.
This year. The temporary deck is gone and the new deck is being built. The addition's walls are up. We recycled 95% of the wood from the older deck - here you see the steps that we reused.	A view of our two apple trees. We have good privacy on the deck because of them. Note how the top deck connected with the bottom deck. It looks like it was planned all at once which was the whole point.
We installed recycled deck parts into a short fence around one of the apple trees and perennial beds. We changed the gazebo into a shed using the wood from the deck as well. The "shed" acts like a focal point in the yard. I planted climbing roses and clematis this year. I hope they last the winter.	The new deck is a good size. Eventually we will get nicer, more comfortable dining furniture but for now this will do. It's a great space to entertain and plenty of room so that nothing feels crowded. It's a treat to be able to sit there and overlook the yard and gazebo-shed.

Here is the completed deck. My next plan is to cut away all the grass around the deck and put in more perrenial beds and a fountain so that we can listen to it as we sit above. We had the electrician put in some plugs under the deck.	Note the connection between the spaces. The deck is not completed in this picture. We have lots of storage space under the deck. We built a door in the lattice and here we will store things like wheel barrows and winter tires -fun stuff.
The deck is completed as is the addition. I added touches of red to keep the colour scheme from being dull.	Some of the fruits of our labour. Everything is complete - just in time for winter. After all, winter is for planning next year's project!

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