Three Piles and a Landscaping Story

Pile of bricks, a pile of dirt and a pile of crap. All three piled up behind my house as our back yard is being landscaped. You can see our photos (and some pixelated video shot with my Blackberry) by clicking here to go to Flickr. The work has gone quite smoothly, given that I'm trying to act as the project manager, and the guys who do our weekly yard maintenance are doing all the work. In other words, I'm paying people who work on lawns every single day to redo my lawn, and I'm skipping hiring an expensive landscaping firm. We did have the good fortune of hiring San Francisco based landscape architect, and very close friend, Dean Williams, to do the plan. And when I say "hire" what I really mean is that he did it out of the kindness of his heart and as a gift for us.

Caro and I had watched a HGTV show called 25 Biggest Landscape Mistakes the week before we started (oh, and did I mention that we started this project the week we came home from the hospital with a brand new baby?!). On the show, there were a couple of important takeaways that I will 100% get behind:

• The number one mistake is not having a plan. You have to have a plan, even if you do it yourself. Having had a landscape architect helped immensely. He did the plan from photos and my measurements. It's not a science, but it helps to have someone understand the relationship between plants, outdoor living space and the house. And then you know what you're getting into, because costs can run away from you before you know it. Which leads to the next point:
• It costs more than you think. Unlike a lot of jobs where labor would be the biggest expense, our single biggest expense is materials, especially the plants. By getting Gustavo and Juan to do it, I got deals at wholesale rather than paying retail myself. It also helps to have a large, commercial nursery. The show said add it all up and add 30%. That's about right.

So check out the photos to see how the three piles were all part of our landscape job, and you can see before, after and nearly-finished photos. Tomorrow evening at dusk we're going to put in the lighting and then the maintenance starts.

Note from Dean: never get thrown off by a garden's first planting. The whole thing will come together and look more natural as the plants fill in their beds.