Frontyard Garden - 2007

2008 - New Project: Frontyard Lawn to Garden

Here are original photos of the front of the of the house:

The front of the house faces SW high in the desert, and receives about 11 hours of direct Sun during the hottest months of the Summer. Also due to our elevation, we constantly get upwards of 40 mph winds that directly hit the front of the house. In order to build a garden here, not only did we need to create windbreaks, but we also needed to keep seedlings safe until they are able to harden off and withstand that amount of Sun.

View from 2003, the house was owned by someone who only like straight lines, not much vegetation, and no mess.		The front terrace area, clean and very blank.		The first step was to loosen and remove the brick, which we used to outline the backyard garden beds.

Brick terrace usually has some sort of plastic or landscape cloth beneath it, and a few inches of sand underneath that.
We removed the sand and have stored it for future cob projects.

The terrace lined with boulders. We left a pathway in the middle to get into the center of the garden.		Once sheet mulched, we hammered in posts for a Medieval-style Wattle fence.		The front brick on the other side was also removed, and we used bottles as a simple edging for this garden bed.

Across the walkway, we started to mound up the ground for a windbreak hedge simply by pulling up the grass and turning it over.		Here is a good shot of the front garden with young seedlings underneath shade teepees we constructed.

Through trial and error, including re-seeding and making further windbreaks with large branches and boulders, success!

Here is the result, a wonderful mix of vegetables and cover crop. Cover crop such as clover and sweet pea help build the soil.		Another shot of the front, Summer 2007. The giant pots are honeysuckle, serving as windbreak for the front door as well as attracting beneficial insects to the area.

This year we are re-designing, replanting and re-mulching the front yard! Take a LOOK!