23.0 Front Yard
The north end is bordered by car park and an existing guild of mostly volunteers on the north and west fence of the car park. Just south of that is the Master Cedar guild.
The yard is bordered on the west by a very large pine and what will become a skirt of Witch Hazel around it.
The center of the yard is occupied by a pair of red dogwoods -- and by the muddy mess left after geothermal was installed. An opportunity to establish a permaculture guild with nice paths and beds.
The gas line and the water line both come out of this side of the house.
One plan is to establish a deer barrier hedge from the car park guild around the north and west edges of the front yard. The hedge would continue along the west side of the kitchen garden and wrap around it to the south.
Leak into basement caused by pipe breaking where joint is now. wall has rebar inside cinder blocks. Had to use cold chisel to few new pipe through wall.
Good worker, got down to the leak in only an hour or so.
They hit the water line, but fixed it right away as they continued to finish the geothermal install. The guardian pine does look a little grumpy, but mostly his own root system was not touched. The other damage done to the front yard by running a six foot deep three feet wide trench through it provides the opportunity to think about the best way to cooperate with nature in repopulating the area.
The studio extension of the house requires six inches of dirt to come out from next to the former retaining wall due to building codes and drainage needs. That growing area between the sidewalk and the new studio wall will have full shade until close till noon, and a lot of shade in the afternoons. However, the light will reflect nicely off the whitish wall and may make this area really hot and desert like in mid-summer.
Front yard general concept, eastern part
On the east side of the front yard there is an existing concrete path. On the right, care needs to be taken to insure rainfall drains down and away from the house. On the left, the former lawn will become beds of some kind.
Front yard from south above, western part
From the roof it is a bit easier to see how to layout things. This area has several trees, though only the pine is really tall. The oak on the other side of the cedar is getting up there also, but it doesn't cast shade into this area. The geothermal install was a huge ditch running from just left of the bottom center out to what I called the Tai Chi field, and thence down into the north field. Much subsidence and distrubence here. The area to the right was torn up by my operating heavy equipment to do the proper drainage for the house extension. Used to be lawn, will now become permanent raised beds of some kind. Paths need to be established that either don't need mowing or are wide enough for the mower.
Eastern walk way to front door and then around to kitchen.
The front yard is first viewed from one of these two locations: on the left from after climbing the steps and on the right from leaving the west parking area. From the left, the guardian pine will dominate the view, although when the dogwood blooms in the spring, it will dominate. From the right, although the guardian pine is definitely there, the foreground has the master cedar, the dogwood, a curving path, and witch hazel framing the opening.
western path from parking area to house, to the kitchen.
The front yard is first viewed from one of these two locations: on the left from after climbing the steps and on the right from leaving the west parking area. From the left, the guardian pine will dominate the view, although when the dogwood blooms in the spring, it will dominate. From the right, although the guardian pine is definitely there, the foreground has the master cedar, the dogwood, a curving path, and witch hazel framing the opening.
