Garden Solutions: Limited Resources
This couple turned an eyesore into a beautiful backyard retreat!
By Kenton Garritson & Brittany Patterson, Keller, Texas
We fell in love with the backyard of our home and it was one of the main reasons we purchased it. It has one covered patio and one uncovered. The potential for a backyard haven was limitless.
However, our community consists of large electrical boxes each serving 8 homes. Normally, the green box would not be an issue because it would be tucked away in an alley, but our community is all front entry. Therefore, we were the unfortunate recipient of a very large unattractive metal green box, which also came with certain restrictions for gardening around it.
Since all of our free time is spent outside, we needed the green box to "disappear." We decided to create a large flower and plant garden island.
Together we designed the gardens and outlined the space with spray paint. We wanted to use stone to outline the garden, so we asked our builder if we could use the leftover stone from the other empty lots. To our surprise he allowed us to use that and any stone we wanted! This was a huge cost savings!
The size of the garden is 20x5 feet. We planted large plants towards the back of the garden and smaller plants up front. We placed two trellises behind the large plants with the expectations to grow tall and hide our green box. To add color and depth to the garden, we added three turquoise clay pots of different sizes to the garden.
To add a little extra night lighting, we placed two solar powered lights in the garden. We also brought three matching cast iron tiki torches and placed them on both sides of the garden.
We absolutely love our backyard now with its water fountain, garden island, bamboo shades and patio plants. We definitely live to be outdoors and are looking to new and innovative ideas to make our backyard as enjoyable during the winter.
