Backyard transformation

Photo 1 is the end result. Photos 2 was taken a month after we bought the house. And photo 3 is from the spring of ‘05, after the pool was put in.

We bought this house in 2004. The previous owners had chopped down all the trees in the backyard, except for 2 pecan trees and a hackberry on the side of the house. In their place, they let the ground become overtaken with weeds. (The yard used to have as many trees as the back neighbors yard that you see behind the fence.) I didn’t mind that they chopped down the trees because they were all Chinese Tallow, which are considered weed tress in our area (Houston, TX).

We wanted quick results, so we replaced almost half of the area with new St. Augustine sod the first summer of ‘04 versus trying to deal with the weeds and wait for the grass to regrow. The next spring in ‘05 came the pool. The following fall of ‘05 , my wife and I added the landscape around the pool. Then came the stone wall for the beds along the back fence in fall of ‘06. It took 8 yards of landscape soil and 7 yards of native hardwood mulch to complete the beds and the pool landscape… my back was very sore from all of that shoveling.

In the spring of ‘07 we added the plants to the stone wall bed. We used our trusted varieties: Wax-leafed Legustrum, Jasmine, Monkey grass, Lorapetlum(sp?), native grasses, petunias, palm trees, nearly-wild rose and Clara Hawthorne. I only use organic fertilizers: mostly cottonseed meal, Texas greensand, and compost tea.

We did all of the labor ourselves, except for building the pool, of course. It’s amazing how heavy sod becomes once you’ve carried 100 of them. I try to limit my outdoor workload in the summer due to the high heat, so spring, winter and fall are our work seasons.

I’m thinking of adding a small pond or some sort of dry stream, but I want to keep the large grass area because I have 2 young boys that like to run around outside. Also, I worry about the amount of time needed to maintain a pond. Is there a lot of maintenance for a pond?

This year, we plan on adding a waterfall to the pool, remove the fort, and add 2 new garden areas.