The Farmhouse Garden: Before + After
After.
Yes. We sold the farmhouse (if you want the nitty grits on that, read this). But I never got to share the befores and afters of the yard and garden renovations, and frankly, those were my favorite parts. So I’m doing it post-sale, and that’s kind of weird, but yanno….I’m weird. Let’s do this.
Before. Cinderblock, anyone?
My gawd the backyard was a wreck when we bought it. It was such a wreck that I never even walked through it until after we officially bought the place and had the demo guys clear it out. The weeds were up to my head in some places and I was pretty convinced it was rattlesnake city back there. So I took a hard pass on the preliminary walk thru. (Incidentally, despite living up against the San Gabriel mountains, we never once found one snake of any sort in our backyard. Thankfully.).
Let’s talk about that giant cinderblock-colored elephant in the room though. WHY WAS THERE A MAYAN TEMPLE COMPLEX OF CINDERBLOCKS IN THE YARD. We later found out that the previous owner (and remember, the house had been totally abandoned for 5 years) was hellbent on building a tall, masonry wall around the property, and instead of yanno…checking with the city whether that was allowed, he went ahead and just started building one. And, as it turns out, was building it on our neighbors’ property (cuz why bother with property lines, right?). Long story short, the city shut him down and he abandoned the materials, as well as the house. Also, as you may recall, there was a lovely pallet of cement bags that had turned into a giant boulder of cement bags left at the top of the driveway. Fortunately for us, our demo guys happily loaded all the cinder blocks up and took them for free because they had a wall project they could use them for. It was a happy, happy day when those blocks left the yard.
After. A few less cinderblocks.
The first phase of the yard renovation was really just about clearing it out, cleaning it up, and making it safe for our dogs. This included installing a new, solid fence (we chose vinyl and while it really held up and did what we needed it to—I wasn’t ever much of a fan of the plastic-ness of it), and for lack of a better idea at the time, a traditional lawn. I knew that eventually I wanted to fill it with as much garden as possible, but in the beginning, we did what we could to just make it useable in the moment. So grass it was. Because it was so overgrown with weeds and abandoned cinderblocks, we actually had no idea that there was this old, raised hardscaping hiding out there—that the lawn area was actually raised about 18” above the driveway level with what appears to be upcycled cement pieces installed to resemble flagstone. This wasn’t maybe ideal (over the years, we had many dogs take rough tumbles off that edge onto the driveway when they were running amok), but it was what it was. We decided to leave it and make it work.
During.
During. The freshly installed new lawn. See that patch of dirt way, way back in the back? That would eventually become the chicken yard.
One thing that always frustrated me about this yard was the fact that it was, unavoidably, half driveway. Such is life when you have a long, narrow city plot of land with the garage at the back of the property. Additionally, just in front of the grapefruit tree in the center of the yard was an awkward extra slab of driveway that was essentially an additional parking spot and “turn-out”. In the beginning, we thought this was great, because it meant you could pull a car down the narrow driveway and actually turn it around.
During.
Ultimately, we realized we never actually used that awkward turn-out for cars. It was just a weird little blob of extra driveway that cut into the green space of the yard. After repeatedly watching our dogs do zoomie face plants into the concrete off of it, we finally decided that installing a low deck there would help them transition more gracefully from the yard to the driveway when they were running hot laps. Also, it would give us another very useable outdoor living space, which is never a bad thing, IMO. We split the difference height wise between the driveway and the raised lawn level, so that when the dogs were tearing around, there was no longer such a big drop-off. The deck nicely filled in the garden side of the yard without actually filling in the garden side of the yard.
After.
Before.
Another immediately glaring issue with the original backyard was that two story house behind us (as well as the visibility into both our east and west neighbors’ yards). That back house was just sitting there. Staring at us. Judging us. We didn’t want to be sitting on our back deck and be making eye contact with our neighbors (it was an above-garage rental house so there was always someone hanging out in those upstairs windows). The very first thing we did was plant trees and vines along the fence line in an attempt to block out that house (and the very visible yard to the west of us with the play equipment). Eventually, we added trellises to the top of the fence line so that those vines could climb up as high as humanly possible. Obviously, it took a few years for that stuff to grow in enough to do anything, but eventually, it really, really paid off with lots of lush, green privacy.
After.
After.
At a certain point, I began planting landscaping around the edges of the lawn, and slowly but surely, the garden bits began to creep in and take over the actual grass area. For several years, we discussed doing away with the lawn altogether (it was expensive to maintain and water, and with the dogs tearing around it and going potty on it, it really just never looked great). Ultimately, we pulled the plug on the lawn, officially, when the Cali drought got so bad that the water restrictions made it impossible to maintain. At that point, we let it die off and began slowly replacing it with low-water irrigated raised beds (this was around the same time that we tore down the old upper deck to build a new one, and we wound up using all the old deck wood to build the garden beds with). These raised beds were where I started growing a lot of my cocktail ingredients.
During. A view of the yard renovation phase where we had replaced the lawn with raised beds and dirt pathways. Here you can see we were doing bark as a ground cover, but it never really worked great with the dogs running on it and the chickens kicking it around.
For awhile, the yard was mostly dirt paths meandering amongst the raised beds. We tried a bunch of different low-water, permeable ground covers on said pathways (including gravel, bark, creeping thyme, dichondra, and clover), but nothing held up well enough to the dog traffic. And we were getting pretty tired of the hounds frolicking in the dirt and then bringing it into the house. So at that point, we started to consider faux grass.
After.
Let’s have a chat about faux grass. Or “frass” as my husband likes to call it (a word which we later learned is the technical term for termite poop BUT WHATEVER. We call it frass. LOL). I was soooooo against it. As a general rule of thumb, I love plants. I love a lush, verdant, living, non-fake garden. The idea of putting turf down felt like we were carpeting the yard with plastic green shag carpeting. Might as well just plop a plastic-covered lawn couch out there and call it a day. It felt so darned bizarre to me. Also, I have literally never seen a fake lawn that I thought looked even remotely, believably like a real lawn. It always just looks sooooooo freaking fake (to me).
Jonathon, on the other hand, was onboard with that fake grass life from day one. He actually never even wanted to put a real lawn down in the beginning—he thought we should have done the fake stuff from the start (in retrospect, he was right. One more time for the people in the back: MY HUSBAND WAS RIGHT. There. I said it, goddamnit). I certainly understood that there were a lot of positives to it: no mowing, no watering, no more dirt flying everywhere when the dogs lunaticked through the yard. Additionally, in our endless and ever-worsening California drought, it was something that would stay green without water and actually help keep water from evaporating out of the ground. That was all pretty enticing. So I conceded that I would start researching samples and if I could find something that looked reasonably NOT FAKE to my very picky eyeballs, I told him I would consider it. I wasn’t optimistic, however.
After.
After. A close up of our frass. Yes, that is garden edging made out of old wine bottles.
So I studiously set about getting my hands on every faux grass sample I could find. Expensive, medium expensive, cheap—you name it, I ordered a sample. And I’m telling you, I hated them all. Even the super expensive, super premium, super “realistic” stuff did not please me (nor did the price tags on this level of product). I almost threw in the towel. Then on a whim, I ordered some random samples from Amazon, and low and behold, there was one. There was ONE that we both looked at and speculatively said: Huh. And it wasn’t even very expensive. The downside was that we would have to install it ourselves. But that didn’t much concern us. To be honest, most professional installations of faux grass bugged the living daylights out of me and it took me a long time to put my finger on just what was bothering me so bad. And then it dawned on me—it’s the FLATNESS of professional installs. They make it so flat and perfect it’s like they’re laying it down over a concrete slab. And in my mind, that contributes to the “fakeness” of it. I mean…SOMETIMES real grass is that perfect—but most people’s backyard lawns are not that immaculate. So I ordered a larger sample of the grass I liked, and fiddled with the install spot a bit. We leveled it, but didn’t try to make it perfect. There were natural divots and deviations, and I really feel like it helped our grass to look a little less glaringly fake.
If you’re interested in seeing a more in-depth post about our entire fake grass install and overall experience, drop me a comment below. But I am an absolute convert now. I wish we had done it soooooo much sooner. It’s one of the best things we did at this house and I never thought I’d say that. Ours was installed for about 5 years before we moved, and it was holding up beautifully—and the dogs absolutely loved it. Their happy place was definitely stretched out on the frass, basking in the sun. And yes! The fake grass worked great with the chickens, too—I get a lot of questions from people worried that the chickens are ingesting it, or that it confuses them, etc etc. When they peck at it, it does not come apart—they are definitely not ingesting it. There is plenty of yard debris that filters down and sits on top of the grass (leaves, dirt, flowers, etc) that they love to kick around and peck at. I promise they don’t know what they’re missing.
After. The dogs absolutely LOVE the artificial turf. And we love that they are not getting covered in dirt because of it.
Before.
Let’s not forget about the original driveway and garage situations. We never actually got around to replacing the cracked asphalt driveway itself (and it will haunt me for the rest of my life), but we did ALAWT of work to make it tidy and useable. And the original garage was basically a collapsing shed of a carriage house.
Before. Please let’s not forget that there was originally a shower stall in the driveway.
After.
It’s amazing what a bit of pressure treated wood curb along the driveway and a good ol’ fashion clean up will do. Oh and a rebuilt garage.
Before. Eek.
After.
We pretty much took the garage down to the studs and rebuilt the exterior, as well as the carriage-style doors. A new industrial-grade roof was put on when we had the main house re-roofed and DANG that made such a difference with the regulation of temperature inside the structure (as did putting insulation in the walls).
Before. The original structure was clad with corrugated metal, and had one wonky little inoperable window. At this juncture, I had started working on the garden and you can see my grapevines starting to kick in (I used the original front door of the house as a garden gate for awhile—it was too flimsy to continue life as a front door—eventually the elements got the best of it out in the garden, too).
After. A few more windows, a few more garden.
The garden side of the garage turned out pretty charming. We got rid of the wonky window and put in two new, fully operable windows (plus decorative shutters). Also, you can see that my grapevine and climbing rose situation progressed over the years. So eventually we built a trellis along this side and the front of the garage to support my vine addiction.
Before. Strangely, I did not take really ANY before images of the interior of the garage. This is it. And it’s blurry as heck thanks to first generation Instagram filters.
After. My workbench area. I spent a lot of time painting things here, so I just let the countertop be a splattered mess of paint. JUST LET ME DO MY ART. Also yes…I put chandeliers in the garage. I’m not sorry.
And now for a senseless photo dump of post-renovation garden images:
After. A view of the the yard and gardens looking towards the back of the property. If not for the trees, you’d see that two story house behind us just looming over the yard. Trees are neat.
After. The pathway leading along the garage to the chicken garden and bar. (More on those two spaces in subsequent posts).
Pollywog and I are both gonna miss our bougainvilleas.
After.
After.
Hai Feebs.
After. Oh, this glorious old grapefruit tree. Man, she was good to us. And she looks damn pretty with her lantern jewelry.
After. Another view of the deck that used to be the weird driveway turnout. Deck > turnout.
After. The view looking back towards the house and a bunch of houndies.
After. I like my gardens overgrown and dappled. You can see the peak of the two story house behind us in the background. Even from this angle, it’s pretty well-concealed by vines and trees.
After. I like petunias.
After. I like petunias alawt.
After. A wide shot of the back of the property towards the chicken garden. You can see Corn back there hanging by her fountain under the neon chicken sign. More on the chicken garden in a future post.
After.
After. How we do beer o’clock.
After. The view from the upper deck, looking down towards the garage. Remember how there was a pile of cinderblocks there originally and you could barely see the garage? That was fun.
After. Twilight view looking towards the house. Gotta love that tree jewelry.
After. I must always have tree lanterns. Always and always. Oh—I know I’ll get questions about where these lanterns are from—-they were actually votive lanterns that I found at World Market and had our electrician hardwire and string through the tree. We had them on a timer so that they came on every evening for cocktail hour and it was always so dang magical.
After. Party lights over a seating area are pretty great, too.
After. Drinking with chickens. Check.
After. Chickens happily chickening around on our frass.
After. Neat.
After. Magic hour.
And well! That’s about it! This is the garden that we no longer own. 😭😭😭 It is definitely the part of this house that I will miss the most; it was such a special, magical space filled with flowers, butterflies, hummingbirds, dog zoomies, and life.
Product Sources:
Basket Stripe Outdoor Rug: Opalhouse for Target
Natural Acacia Wood Kapari Outdoor Chair: World Market
Striped Spice Outdoor Lumbar Pillow: World Market
Red and White Cabana Stripe Pillow: World Market but no longer available
Bird leg side table: Urban Outfitters (spray painted red)
“Neat” marquee letters: Amazon (spray painted them tomato red)