Planting Plans

While waiting for the fence guys to come back, the landscaper came over and gave us the plans that he drew up for plantings in the garden.

Here's where we were with the hardscape plans:

Here are the planting plans:

We like most of the plants he chose.  We may decide to swap a couple of them out for some of our favorites that we already have.
-We had dug up a bunch of them and placed them safely in our fenced in veggie garden (which I just realized I never posted about building last year, so I'll have to come back to that in a future post!)
-I love lavender plants, however I'm not sure about filling in the insides of the boxwood garden around the sundial with them... I found this herb garden plan and think maybe I want to do something like that!  It seems more colonial :)

New Fence!

While all of the pathway stone & brick work was being completed, we were busy picking out our new fence for the inside of the yard (to replace the white picket fence that runs along the driveway).

We picked a square picket that goes with the Colonial style of the house.  Of course, the one we picked had to be custom made, so it took a while to get it.

They arrived on a Friday and installed most of it...

We LOVE it!  

Here's a shot of the corner post with the cap in place:

I was really impressed with the fence company's attention to detail... look at how they even cut the length of the pickets on an angle! They answered a ton of questions we had about putting in the gates, and gave us a selection of gate pulls to choose from.  

The fence guys will be back in a week to do the gates and the last panels of pickets in the back (we still need to be able to get the tractors in there for moving dirt right now).

Patio Started

They have finished the stone wall and put in the gravel for the patio!  I ran upstairs to get a photo looking down at it all... excuse the shot through the window screen!

The wheelbarrows and boards are covering up the holes for the footings (for the pavilion).

We hit a bit of a standstill for about a week after this because we were still waiting on permits for building the pavilion and the inspector had to come to approve the footing holes before the concrete could be poured.  

It figures that the following days were very rainy, and our poor landscaper had to run over each day and use a sump pump to make sure the footing holes stayed dry & the cardboard holding the holes didn't collapse in.  Happily, everything passed inspection and we're moving right along again!

Brick Work & Stone Wall Progress

I absolutely LOVE the way the brick came out!

Now we just have to order the sundial and pedestal so that the middle can be finished.

The stone wall is almost completed- the left side is done...

And dirt is starting to be moved around to level out the garden areas now...

 Here is the view from the driveway entrance... you can see the right side of the wall still needs to be finished up.

The view from the Well House...

Brick Work

We went back & forth for a few days about the circle where the paths met, and our garden feature/sun dial was going to be placed.  Should we have the blue stone of the pathways continue through the circle, or make it stand out with some brickwork?

We decided to do a herringbone pattern of brick, with a boarder around it...

Pathway Progress

The stone work moved along nicely...

We realized that we need another of the stepping blocks to put to go into the Well House... that had to be ordered.

Patio Furniture

The end of that week in late March brought more progress on the wall that will be in front of the pavilion.

This got us excited to start planning out the patio space a little.  Over the weekend we went to check out the pavilions.  While there, we stumbled on a sale on a patio set, so we went ahead and bought one that we liked.  It was going to take a few weeks to get it delivered, but that should be good timing!

It should go really well with the wrought iron pieces that I already have.