Our Landscaping Story

Here is where I will write about the progress of our landscaping. It was always our intention to do all the gardens ourselves, the only tasks we have had professionally done so far is the placement and compaction of some crushed rock, and path edging in the back yard, ready for me to lay pavers. We will be getting the back yard properly levelled and a lot more soil delivered (apparently up to 18m3) and spread in preparation to sow grass in a couple of weeks.

The priority for us was to get the landscaping at the front of the house looking complete in a relatively short amount of time. I couldn't have done it without an extra week off and I certainly couldn't have done it without DS and at times DW. Having said that there is still a small garden to be done on the other side of the driveway that is a low priority.

Underway, on Sept 30th. The dirt was courtesy of the builder, we demanded a small amount to repair the damage done to the nature strip by various vehicles, and they ended up delivering 3 m3! It certainly came in handy.



The dirt is spread, the edging complete and the letterbox moved.


These are the plants we bought for the front gardens. We went back for more and ended up planting about 40-ish.


And here they are in the ground.




That evening some black mulch was delivered, of which I have a large amount left over for future use around the back, and the next morning we had an extra metre of sand delivered for paving, and 2 m3 or 3 tonnes of river stones. Which could not be shovelled.


During the week the grass was sown and the pavers laid, and today the pebbles were delivered. Voila!



The paving has also been completed between the deck and the gates thanks to the pebbles arriving today. Most of the pavers had been in place for quite a while but it was only this weekend that I got around to cutting and shaping some pavers to maintain the proper gap around the curve at the bottom end. Before and after:

Very nice Eager, so neat and tidy! I love the river stones and pebbles, they really brighten up your yard. Well done for doing it all yourselves too.

Wow, it looks great!!

Also, may I ask who your bricks are and what they are called? We are trying to decide on dark bricks at the moment and yours look very nice.

Loretta

Nice job you done there and great step by step photos. Looks like you have chosen some good hardy drought tolerant plants and made a good looking low maintenance garden.

What are you going to use in the middle? Instant turf, seeded grass, synthetic grass or something else?

Great job on the landscaping. As a matter of interest, what paving tiles did you use? They look similar to what I'd like.

Can't wait to see the landscaping at the back.

Judie

Arrgghh, booo you! You make it sound easy but I know it's really not!

Just kidding!

It looks awesome. Love the simplicity and cleanliness of it. Top job!

Looks very nice Eager

I am also thinking to do all the gardening ourselves too.. Can i ask how do you flatten the ground? do you use any machines?

Awesome - looks great. Your path out the back is similar to what we are doing.

We went down the same route as you .. doing it ourselves. It's bl**dy hard work and takes forever but it's nice to sit back and admire your handy work.

I think they sowed seeds for grass

Love your pebbles. What is the best way to move them? (since you don't recommend shovelling) I am thinking of doing something similar in our garden.

i love it! It looks fantastic. Great job!

Great job and great photos!!

We have paving laid in a similar way with the pebbles. Did you concrete the pavers down so they dont move?

It makes a great feature of your front yard





I dare say by hand

Thanks all so much for the compliments. I think most of you could guess how proud I am of the result despite the sore back and ragged hands etc.

loretta - The bricks are Austral 'Latrobe.' Several forum members are using Austral 'Canterbury' which are very similar, but a bit brighter/darker/richer, if you know what I mean.

I_BUILD - We didn't get too extravagent regarding the front lawn. All we did was level it out with the soil provided, leave it loosely raked, and chucked handfulls of seed mixed in with a granular fertiliser at it, and water it once a day. Apparently it is advisable to compact it all down once sown but I didn't bother. Nevertheless we now have grass shoots popping up everywhere, despite me being a bit slack with the watering part. The seed used was Brunnings (not Bunnings, although that's where I bought it) Aussie Green lawn seed. No doubt I will post pictures of it in the future.

Judie - The pavers are simply known as Stepstone and the colour is Charcoal. I got them from the local supplier that was also the agent for our Austral bricks. They are concrete, not clay, measure 400mm by 400mm by 50mm thick and cost around $6.50 each. Indelibly etched in my mind is the fact that there are 99 to a pallet, each pallet weighs 1.7 tonnes, we got 2 pallets delivered, and I will probably run out!

claego - The ground was already relatively flat although the top part of the path needed some filling with sand and the bottom part needed some soil removed which DS and I achieved with a mattock. No machinery was used. The only reason a slope exists at all on our block is because the slab had to be built up because of the flatness of the area.

Amber - Correct!

stonecutter - The pebbles are easily shovelled and swept into the gaps on the path, but the rocks in the front garden, some of which are 200mm across, are not! It took several hours for the 3 of us at home at the time to place them. I had them dumped on a tarp just in front of the garden, I basically just knelt down and threw them on, DW and DS placed them around the plants and yelled at me if I got carried away.

Paula - I didn't concrete the pavers down. In fact I didn't even consult the Paving and Concreting frorum for hints. The only advice I sought was from a couple of garden suppliers and the landscaper who put the crushed rock in for the paths in the back yard, who suggested a dob of mortar under each one. This I ignored. I used leftover brickies sand on top of the crushed rock for the path in the back yard (against the advice of one other); happily though the pavers on that path held quite firm in the few weeks before I got the pebbles down. The path out the front has no crushed rock under it and I used bedding sand as the initial fill material at the top end of the path that needed a bit of building up, and a skim of brickies sand over the lot after that. The paths are technically not perfect but the pavers are not loose; the trick is to make sure the sand is loose so the pavers can be compacted in to it.

Hey Eager, it looks fantastic!!!!!

Very nice clean lines, love the path with the pebbles!!!
Can't wait to see more pics..............

Hey, BTW did you use weedmat?

Fantastic Eager! It looks unreal - great job

I think it looks great.

I hadn't seen that black mulch before. Does it stay nice and dark or does it eventually fade?

I will have to keep an eye out for it on my next garden centre trip (they are becoming a bit toooo frequent these days )

It was such a big job, well done, Eager. Hope your garden brings you many days of joy .

Karol, black mulch does fade, but what doesn't in our Australian sun, you just add some more when it gets a bit thin.

Maggie

Nic, I didn't use weed mat at all. A bit of Roundup will take care of any strays.


There you go, I didn't know that, or even consider it! Oh well...

I got the idea of the black mulch from a new display centre nearby. I thought it looked pretty good, a lot more modern than the old fashioned pine bark.

You did a great job, Eager.

We are still tossing between doing our own front landscaping or leave it to the experts.
Stockland is going to provide us with some plants/mulch and one tree.
REally have no background in landscaping.. so undecided.

Seeing your work makes me think that probably we could also do it
But might have to read some books or tips from this forum re: landscaping.

Looking forward to the photos when the grass have grown.

Eager it looks really great... these threads make it all look so easy. But I know for me it will be hard.

Jo

same with me