The summers of 2014 and 2015 were pretty busy cleaning up landscaping around the garage and some personal life changes as well which are my excuses for not finishing this in a timely manner. Sadly in that 2 year span I have lost of the progress pictures I took. But I do have some fresher pictures taken this morning.
To start the summer of 2014 was the more back breaking as after the driveway cured I worked on getting gravel out of my yard that the contractors left behind. I basically made a sifter out of some 1/4" metal fabric and some wood. Luckily that summer when I was about half way done, I got some help from the personal life change that happened. Between the two of us we were able to get a majority of the grave out of the ground and piled on the pile that was behind the garage that the contractors left. Under the dirt there are some more gravel in these pictures.
After we got the gravel out I called another company to take most of the grave and to fill in the rest with black dirt. They also provided grass seed. This was about November when they took gravel and put down the dirt. Also that summer I re-did the rock garden that is in the back of and the side of my house, in fact I started with that and took me about a month to get all of the rock out and remove the bushs. I replaced the bushes with a tall plant I can not think of the name of, some Catmint and another plant I can't think the name of. I also added a rubarb plant to the corner of the house. One thing I learned with the rubarb is that it does take up a lot of space and not to have plants too close to it, it will over shadow them.
After a nice winter we started work on the rest of the landscaping around the garage in 2015. I made the mistake of starting on the pond before getting the gravel moved away. Once the gravel was moved I could work on a raised garden.
The raised garden was a challenge after deciding on a type and color, I ran into how to get the bricks. I was able to get them delivered on 3 pallets that sat in my driveway for a while. Then the fun part was getting them in and leveled. Sadly I don't have any fun pictures of setting it up, but with some help from some new family I was able get it built and filled with dirt and what was left of the gravel. All and all it came out pretty good.
As you can see it pretty much wraps around the garage. I also have started my vegetable garden for the year. The trellus in the front I just put in yesterday with some clematises.
The last piece I finished was the pond and the patio. The patio took me a few tries to keep the tiles level after the winter. It took some leveling sand and some gravel to get it to stay level. The pond I totally gutted and rebuilt. It is now deeper than it was and last summer we added 2 Koi and 6 goldfish to it as well.
Granted it took me 3 years to get everything back into place, I wouldn't have changed much from what I did. It was a project worth the heartache. I have even been able to do some wood working in the garage even. Overall it was worth it.