Or the other option and that is to have a stamped concrete patio.
Or the other option and that is to have a stamped concrete patio.
Rather than use PT wood for the stop, use "brick edging" or "paver edging" (see:
Michael (LS)
How about just leave the soil/where the patio is to be as-is, and hunt around and collect some naturally-flat stones and lay them down like a mosaic, leaving some grass to grow in-between? If they heave from frost, etc., maybe it'll just add character.
"Don" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@news5.newsguy.com:
One other thing that I know of works - if the patio is lower than a surrounding flower bed, and edged with something larger andheavier, such as the concrete pavers taht IIRC are about 10" long and 6" wide. I did that in a smal yard which had very sandy soil, plus sloped slightly into a gravel area (did the gravel for setting up the charcoal grill).
I did about five patios in brick when I moved to the latest place. They are all on different levels. The highest level is a raised planting bed with a pretty rough starting rock then gravel base then a built up wall, then dirt fill. There is actually a certain amount of terracing involved, but it had served well for planting rather large things like butterfly bushes and Rose of Sharon and Mock Orange and False Quince and various berry bushes and etc. In front before transitioning to plain ole brick patio, I put in a couple feet garden with a single brick border, which also provide a place for about half the long length of this affair to have a place where the upper container garden can drain into lower dirt (chucked some PVC pieces into the gravel at the base of the upper bed. Everythings really mostly on one level, it just looks like three levels.
THat sounds really nice - any pics? Butterfly Bush and Mock Orange are great for the scent - I like to try to plan for that, as well as for otehr types of all season interest. THe terracing sounds very nice as well. I'd like to se pics, if you have any on-line.
Cool :) I bet you all get a lot of enjoyment out of that.
Did you plan the landscaping yourself, or did you hire a landscpae designer? Just curious.
Certain seasons, yes. I have been very lucky with dogwoods while neighbors have been losing theirs (mine are wild, there's aren't), unlucky with pin oaks. Drought is taking it's toll around herewith some trees like maples, elms on their last leg with Dutch Elm disease, and so on, gone to high, growing too shallow.
a landscape designer/architect did the initial design with major earthmoving execution and planting by my #2 and #3 sons... Brickwork ws done by a VA firm that does traditional brickwork, various tree people removed 17 weed trees, some of which became free mulch, trimmed (a few times) the 200yr +oak, and cut down a few giant problems, I got a bunch of free 2x2 bluestone pavers left over from a job by a guy who gave me too high an estimate but asked me if I wanted them... I went in the woods for moss, ferns, and vinca minor (periwinkles), started a row of Bulgarian/Macedonian geraniums (zdravets) from five initial plants I got from a priest at a former Bulgarian church. Pulled ivy off one side of the house and removed from one hill and replaced it with vinca and a strange rock garden.
The hard part is planning for the unusual conditions. If things are going to be more dry than in th epast, that's something you can plan for, but it's difficult when you have a generally moist area that's subject to drought every, say, 20 years or so - the only things one can pretty much count on is natives, and even there, every plant has to cope with a combination of climate and location/micro-climate.
THen, of course, there is the problem of availability - it can sometimes be very challenging to get hold of something that is technically fairly common, yet almost never available in nurseries...
I didn't plant dogwood because the conditions locally are just too difficult. Even when I planted my redbud, I planted a variety (or maybe it's a subspecies?), sometimes called 'Oklahoma', sometimes called 'texensis', because ti is more heat-resistent than the average *Cercis canadensis*. (It also gets white flowers, since it's located in what I hope to develop into the "white garden" if we live here long enough, but I guess that's neither here nor there...))
Pomegrant is interesting - they need to be pruned, but so do most things. I have a 'nana" (miniature), and the flowers are a truely outstanding red-orange color, and contrast well with the bright green of the leaves.
But I can go on about plants for far *far* too long... Sometimes I think I really did miss my calling ;)
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