500 s.f. Of Fun

Maple Ridge

Ornamental grasses are among my favourite garden plants:

East Side (Hastings-Sunrise) Vancouver

With a lot of chafer beetle/crow and racoon damage the clients wanted to remove lawn and replace it with manageable (aka “low-maintenance”) plantings incorporating some grade changes

They had taken pictures of various neighbourhood gardens that were similar to what they wanted to have themselves and liked the Japanese garden style

There were a few precious plants the clients wanted to keep including the small Japanese Maple in the middle of the above picture So the whole design became a context for that one small tree

The clients decided on a custom made bench that would attach to the largest stone toward the back so instead of a low flattish stone we put a tall one that would complement the bench which would be built after installation

 

Thanks to 4 Elements Gardens for a great job!

West Side House (Vancouver)

The client wanted to dispatch her lawn in the shady north-facing front yard, so had some work done in the Spring 2015. But it didn’t really meet her expectations, so she asked me to do a revision.

There was too much similarity–many small leafed evergreens, little variation in height, and many shrubs that didn’t survive the summer. Wasted space in the front slope.

We planned to salvage as much as possible, but not compromise the plan in order to do so. Turned out pretty easy to salvage most, the rest were quickly snapped up when put on the boulevard with a “free to good home” sign.

We used all the existing rocks and built up a rustic, casual retaining wall, about 20″ tall, adding almost 3′ of front yard space. The Irish Yew will fill in in time; you’re always balancing cost vs size.

 

False Creek Condo

With two small balconies on this two level condo, there’s lots of options for outdoor living. The clients wanted container gardens, leaving enough space for leisurely sitting outside their master bedroom, and eating outside the kitchen.

1. Schizachyrium scoparium Carex ‘Everest’Lysimachia nummularia

And while shopping for the coleus that didn’t exist, I did find this pennisetum that I don’t remember the name of, and thought it would complement the Schizachyrium nicely. Which it does.

1. Acer palmatum ‘waterfall’LysimachiaCarex testaceaSedum ‘John Creech‘

1. Imperata cylindricaLysimachia nummulariaChamaecyparis obtusa ‘aurea nana’, which can grow to 6′, but won’t here.

1. Cephalotaxus harringtonia ‘fastigiata’Lysimachia nummulariaHeuchera ‘Bright and Breezy’I’d wanted to add coleus, but there wasn’t any to be had by Aug 21!

 

North Vancouver

New house construction:

 

 

South Burnaby

This South Burnaby client initially just wanted to create a prettier foundation garden, and then possibly replace the turf on the boulevard with something lower maintenance. In discussion about what that could look like, they decided to go further and redo the whole front, none of which worked well as it was. The long dry summer (unusual for the Wet Coast) showed up the inadequacies of a mainly turf yard.

 

 

Vancouver’s west side

This client wanted a low-cost, low maintenance renovation of her dark, dry, dingy ground-level apartment garden. We negotiated on the “low-cost” part.

Before pictures:

After pics, all credit to the homeowners who did all the work.

New Westminster

The clients wanted a fun space for their two little girls to enjoy, a space for the adults to sit and relax and watch the girls, and lots of fruit and vegetable gardening space.

Before pics:

After pics:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This design is pretty simplistic to see here. The planting beds are identified as numbers–each numbered bed is treated like a large container garden, using the existing plants, but replanting them in different places to give a better sense of continuity to the whole.