The "Show us ya Garden - Landscaping" Thread

[Hairs]

Just a modest 2 acres in a small country town.
God's Country really 

[duggie]

I have found some time over the past two weekends to carry on with my front yard face lift. I still have a fair way to go with the block work up the driveway but it is all starting to look like it did in me head.



Looked very close to this last Saturday morning.






Looked like this this morning






Looks like this this arvo.

Time for a beer or three , me thinks. 

[Hairs]

Nice work mate 
Has come up a treat
Enjoy your cold 

[Cruiser 105Tvan]

Geeezz, you've got big rats there Hairs!!

[Bullant4x4]

An oldie but a goodie. I loved waking up in the morning.

[tryagain]

Well, I landscaped it, maintain it, and refer to it as my garden. Downside is I don't own it, upside is I get paid to do it.

[tryagain]

And another one, although I should have a lot more and better photos but seldom think to take them.

[Skipper]

Awesome looking Dave.

Can I ask what you have running along the top of the fence line and on the fence? Is it a climber and vine?

Also keen to see a better picture of the frames... I have a neighbours fence that would suit that set up...

Cheers,

Adam..

[Bullant4x4]

Well, I landscaped it, maintain it, and refer to it as my garden. Downside is I don't own it, upside is I get paid to do it.

Whats the address? Just missing a camper pitched on the lawn 

[Pete79]

I've finally got around to going through the old hard-drive and uploaded a few photos from the work we've done on our place.

Firstly;
When we bought our block the only infrastructure was this first 5 meters of gravel into the cleared area at the front of the block and a walking track through the gully and up into the top back section with a foot bridge over the creek that runs through the middle of the property.


So we just camped on it for a while as we got a feel for the lay of the block and started making some rough plans.


After about 6 months we pushed in a lower driveway and got the start of a pad happening.


Then camped on that pad for a while longer... 


Then all the fun life stuff of building a house, having kids and working my a** off to pay for everything happened for a while.

Our little valley gets really good annual rain fall (even though you wouldn't know it right now), so the very first piece of civil works I did on the block was cut in a big drain that captured nearly all of the surface water from about 180m or so of our road frontage and pushed it all into a 375mm culvert. This pulled everything away from the top of the house pad and I knew I would need that water for something one day, just didn't know what at that stage....

After not too long the wife got sick of the big washout that was forming at the end of the culvert and mud pit that was supposed to be our front yard and she insisted that we get someone in to sort out something to retain the bank.
I reluctantly agreed (I have a problem paying people to do things that I can do myself), but the landscaper was a pretty cool guy and we bounced a round a few ideas about a dry creek bed, I agreed with the concept and got them started ASAP.

The first 12 tonnes of rock was delivered and the boys got to work.




In the end I was left with what looked like an incomplete job, but it was only the beginning of the whole project and that was really only what I had commissioned the guys to do.
It didn't look the greatest, but I wasn't too bothered at that stage.


Now I did mention earlier that I always thought I could do the job myself, didn't I?

I'm pretty sure the "professional" job stayed for about a month or so (just long enough for the pasion fruit vine to grow on the fence), then I called up my mate, I got another 24 tonnes of rock delivered and did it my way. 

Out it all comes.



My waterfall at the end of the main culvert dug out and starting to be rocked up.


Now it's taking shape.


And finished to a standard that I can live with now.





And I did mention it rains here, right?
This is a pretty poor quality video of the creek in an average shower of rain. You should see it when it's really pouring (like the January 2011 event, she was raging then)

You might want to turn down your sound before clicking on this.


So we're up to 36 tonnes of rock and 800m2 of turf so far for just the front yard.

Next I had to move onto the back yard.

[Pete79]

And on to the back yard.

The plan was to put in a 6x12 shed with a nice wide (and flat) driveway behind the shed.
So first up was the shed pad. We'd been going all of 20 minutes when this big old stump raised it's head, but the little 1 tonne chinese digger ripped into it, no sweat.


To get the shed pad big enough we needed to rob a fair bit more dirt from the top bank then I had planned.
So in with another 12 tonnes of rock, this time I ordered what was supposed to be 300mm pitching rocks, but I recon half the load were a good 600mm and I had to get a bit creative to move them around.

The wife and I laid this 22m long wall on our own, by hand, in March (read that as sweating our a** off).




With that unplanned bit of extra manual labor out of the way, it was on with the real job.
For that we needed.... you guessed it... another 24 tonnes of rock.
And there was some big suckers in these loads, we had the 3 tonne bobcat wheel standing with one that was basically 1m cubed.



Shed pad formed up and ready to pour.


Now the wife and I built this shed 100% on our own, just the 2 of us.
If you ever want to test a marriage, build a shed together... 

I'm happy to say we made it though this one and now when we're having a glass of wine or a beer together out there in the afternoons the drinks are even sweeter. 


We're in the process of making our outdoor kitchen and entertaining area between the shed and the house.
It's only early stages now, but the concept is there.


To finish off the lower driveway I needed to put in a retaining wall along the bank behind the shed, but I was getting a bit tired of playing with rocks, so went with timber on this one.

Nice rainbow colours out of the footings.


This bank is mostly clay over sandstone (as you can see by the colours above), in the wetter months water leaches out of the toe on this bank.
So I thought I'd take advantage of nature and pull that water down into some garden beds.
I thought 350mm X 350mm trenches with agg pipe and filled with 40-50mm stones should do the trick. The agg pipe is coiled inside each bed and topped with stone before filled up with our garden soil we've been building for a few years.



Now we've gone from this.


To this.


And to finish it all off, I pulled in a new top driveway so now I can drive straight though front to back.
As with everything on our block, it wasn't so simple, but we're really happy with how it came up in the end.






Now that I've sorted all my photos on my hard drive, I guess I'd better get started on doing my trailer build thread here soon too......   

[Watty2975]

Great job. A lot of hard work and good thought gone in there.

[Fizzie]

Awesome job Pete! 

& you have of course left a few 00 m² of grass open for Swaggers to set-up on, haven't you     

[Pete79]

Cheers guys.
Yes a lot of hard work to get to this stage, but still so much more to go.
Thankfully I had a 5 year gap in between doing the front yard and the back yard (we moved to Sydney for my work for a while), but we're back in full swing now.
I've got 200 native tube stock sitting at our local nursery to collect now, I'm waiting for this darn rain to start so I can plant out my road side garden.

And yes Fizzie, there's a couple of nice flat spots put aside for visiting campers to set up on.
We had the whole family here last Christmas. At one stage we had 15 adults, with camper trailers in the back yard, tents in the front yard and plenty of beers and good times had by all. 

[Hairs]

Geeezz, you've got big rats there Hairs!!

Love the wild life that share our place 
Found a 6' roo in the front yard the other morning, lucky I saw it before I let the dogs out.
We've had snakes, Red Bellie Blacks, Green Tree snake that lives under the solar panels, Blue Tongues, a kola, King Parrots and many other birds, even have a Wedge Tail nest about 400 meters away, an echidna got trapped inside the house yard one night, we have had a turtle bury it's eggs in the garden one year and a Plover that nest every year on the front lawn.
But those rats are the funniest buggars to watch when they get close to the three guinea pigs cages.
They have no idea what is in the cage, it kinda scares them, but they wont hop away.

[ronmac]

Hairs, are they paddy melons ( wallabies ) in your top picture. cheers Ron.

[Hairs]

Hi Ron,
Sorry, they aren't,
Just your normal garden variety Wallaby 

Couldn't help myself 

This poor little bugger spent three days under the draw bar of the caravan one flood, it rained & rained.

[briann532]

Looking really awesome Pete.

Well done.
Also thanks for sharing the pics.

[Green rv]

Holly rock wall Pete
like you landscape style

im doing a native vs veggie and fruit garden at home on a std size block in the suburbs 
still needs a lot of work
also need to finish my 35 tonne rock wall that i started in 2010 during the 2010-2011 floods


Adam

[Joff]

Nearly finished the new pond. We always wanted to live by a river



















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[Joff]

...

[duggie]

Very nice Joff , you gotta be happy with that . 

[Joff]

Very nice Joff , you gotta be happy with that . 

Send me down a couple 60cm Barra to stock it with 

[Fizzie]

Sorry, can't help with the Barra 

How about a 60cm Saltie to keep your's company?   

(& there'll be no more dangling toes in the water!  )


BTW - looks awesome! 

[KeithB]

This was our last house on a tiny block of land in the inner west of Sydney. We quarried all of the stone for the garden walls out of our own bedrock. The pond is over six feet deep and the biggest fish is 85cm.