Backyard Planter Bed Help
jmscv
last year
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mojavemaria
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Raised Bed Layout and Landscaping New Backyard
Comments (2)Do you have a Homeowner's Association, or is this county property with no restrictions. Ditto to the above. Do you have no front yard, or no back yard? Seems like one part of your house has no property next to it... that would be the West side? Where are the windows? What is your view? Where is the street?...See MorePlease help me draw the lawn / bed Iines for backyard
Comments (32)Yardvaark said "Whatever you do ... whatever lines you make, you must make some simple, clean artistic geometry out of them. If you want more lawn on the west side, you can do it ... but adjust the lines to reflect simplicity, s m o o t h n e s s and the boundaries of nearby objects." I concur. Yard and bed edges that are squiggly remind me of group of people all talking over each other with no one saying anything of importance. It's confusing, distracting, and generally unpleasant. There is also the element of scale, the balance of area size for plants to that allotted for yard. I like to size the plant area to something no less than half the area of the sum of lawn and any hardscape devoted to people. And the plant area should not be more than twice the 'people' area. The size of landscape elements should be compatible with the overall size. For large areas use at least some larger shrubs, trees, walks. and decks. For smaller areas, scale down everything. To begin this discussion I selected a single objective you gave, that of making "the yard look deeper instead of a shallow and wide rectangle". There are an infinite number of desirable arrangements you might choose. In the end you may want to discard this idea in favor of developing some other idea. I admit I had my own motive in selecting that one goal for review. Landscaping is a blend of science and art. Years ago on this forum there were regular participants that made their living doing landscape design along with a host of others that had long studied the academic principles involved. I miss those discussions we had. The implementation of "making the yard look deeper instead of a shallow and wide rectangle" could have led to such a discussion even though it may of had limited benefit to the homeowner....See MoreHelp with bed /border shapes in my odd backyard
Comments (10)This also brings back a flashback of my own situation. I had been landscaping my backyard over the years, but in pieces and not as a whole landscape. This resulted in several disparate forms, a gazebo on a berm (circular), lawn (rectangle), and playset on bermed area (another rectangle). It wasn't until I saw a little side-bar snippet and drawing in Fine Gardening (don't remember the issue) that referenced "recieving forms". I posted here awhile back my excitement about this (see link to thread below). A recieving form is basically relating shapes to one another, be they bed shaped, lawn shapes or berm shapes so that the peices look that they "go" together, which unifies an area over a stretch of negative space. For example looking from space at the earth, it's easy to see how S. America (brazilian coast) can fit into the west coast of Africa. This type of re-structuring your lawn shape and bed shapes will help to bring together all of the areas of your backyard into pleasant spot. Also consider adding some berms for changes in elevation (assuming drainage won't be adversely impacted)to add some interest and aid in the recieving form effect. Here is a link that might be useful: Recieving forms...See MoreGarden Planter in the Backyard
Comments (1)I love, love, my raised garden beds. Mine are made of redwood and there is no maintenance. They get few weeds and are easy a pie to weed. I grow tomatoes, eggplants, cucumbers(trellised) and summer squash in mine. The best thing I grow in mine is root crops. I filled mine with top soil and compost. There are absolutly no rocks and the root crops are perfect! Mine are two feet high so I can't grow melons or winter squash because of the drop. Make sure the metal on your ends do not leach chemicals into the soil....See MoreLyn Nielson
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