Landscaping Project EP3: Designing and Planning (Phase 1, Part 2)
Dark gray rock with concrete gives a clean, modern look. While it has its place, we weren’t huge fans of the standard, tan, Colorado river rock that is everywhere in our area. Top Tip: Walking/driving around can give you inspiration - this picture was taken a street over from our house!
Our general style choice is modern, and our yard is no exception. However, a good design still takes into account the local materials and the existing design queues, so we wanted to make it fit with the house, while improving it at the same time. Flagstone is quite common in Colorado as a material, so for the front yard we decided to keep and use as much flagstone as made sense. It also looked good with the brick, so why not re-use an expensive material? For the backyard, we thought that concrete would make a good patio, and was something that we could tie into the rest of the design. Neutral, earthy, and dark colors all work well with concrete and give a clean, modern aesthetic.
Most fences in our area are your standard cedar, 5 or 6 foot privacy fence with vertical slats. There’s nothing wrong with this - cedar is a great material and the aged silver color of cedar is beautiful - but it felt too traditional and boring for the modern vibe we wanted. Instead, we chose to run the slats horizontally and came to the conclusion that a skinnier slat with more posts would handle our lot’s grade changes better, while still looking modern and having proper scale. It would also give our fence more dimension to make our yard feel more private - while not violating any city ordinances of course. To further make our “modern” fence fit the part, we settled on making it the color black. To do this, we settled on burned cedar - a technique called shou sugi ban - which would also help extend the life of the fence by providing water, rot, and insect resistance.
Using hardscape that exists (retaining wall, left and deck, right), helps direct the design of new features.
With basic material choices and the major elements that we wanted to add or change with our yard - namely making our patios more functional and building a sturdy fence to contain our dog - we were able to move on to the finer details. One of my complaints about our yard was that mowing the lawn was difficult in some areas, so we chose to eliminate the difficult section in the front, and add beds for planting along the fence in the back. We also decided to pave over some of the existing grass with our expanded patio in the backyard. The boundary near our AC condenser and sprinkler valve boxes was also moved to be easier to mow, as well leave an area for a small, future storage shed.
Overhead view of the backyard hardscape plan with gate locations are circled in red.
In the backyard, we wanted to get rid of the massive sandbox that we didn’t want or need and that Atlas continually tracked into the house, replacing it with a smaller sitting area. Our house also came with a small roof structure attached to the garage which was ugly and impractical, so we decided to remove it. It was also short enough you had to duck every time you walked under part of it (out of reaction more than anything) - which is kind of ironic since the previous owners apparently used it to shelter their pet duck.
On both sides of the house the gates were pretty far back, so we chose to move them forward. One moved to meet the neighbor’s gate and provide room to put our three trash cans (trash, recycling, and compost). The other we moved forward to extend the taller fence and provide privacy from the neighboring water tower - an area where some of the local high schoolers tend to hang out at during lunch. We also added a second gate on that side to make a quiet little sitting area, and a place for our cats and house-plants to hang out.
Simplified grading plan for the backyard
With the hardscape locations decided, we then chose materials for each area and detailed these out in our model. This was all done with a simplified model, while items that needed to be tackled such as grading, drainage, and sprinklers were done either in a different 3D model, or with paper and pencil. Once these details were determined, we were able to consider starting teardown. However, we still had to consider where and what type of feature plants we wanted before we could complete Phase 1 of the plan.
