The first faze of our backyard project began by first laying down cardboard at the very back and then lawn fabric on the remainder of the area we wanted to cover with rock. We found some no dig edging on sale last summer. (I would highly recommend this as it makes the project so much easier.) This worked really well to divide our soon to be rocky back portion of the back yard with the existing grass. We borrowed a couple of wheel barrels and with some much appreciated extra helping hands managed to move the big pile of rock that was dropped off at the front of the house to the back. Slowly filling up the back portion and then raking it all out as evenly as we could.
For the second faze, I marked out and then laid down lawn fabric for the area we planed to put down the deck tiles over the grass. I installed the tiles over top of the fabric and used several left over lawn stakes to further secure the tiles in place. Most of the items we purchased for this project were all on sale or from the Dollar Store including the three boxes of deck tile that we used. With a tight budget I needed to be both creative and save money whenever possible. I purchased a couple of flower pots last year and a week or so ago I found the solar lantern at the dollar store. I gathered up excess soil and all the big rocks I could find in our yard as well as some broken clay pots, and began to put something together. Once that was done we were able to go and get a few starter plants to add to the pots and planters. In the end we ended up with three different sized containers on the deck tiles and three identical pots spread out evenly along the back portion of the yard.
In doing all this work we were able to reduce the amount of grass and grass maintenance by about half in the back yard. And, as it turned out we had some edging left over as well as a small amount of rock, which of course gave me an idea.
When I was last in our local Restore they had some indoor/outdoor boxes of medium gray 12x24 tile. If you're not familiar with the Restore (Habitat for Humanity ReStore) they are a home and building supply store that resells new and used building materials, houseware items and furniture. The money they raise funds local building projects for families in need. And, since the price and the colour was right we picked up two boxes and I started another project to reduce the amount of grass, this time in the front yard.
The final faze of our project began by laying out that one left over piece of edging that turned out to be just long enough to run parallel along the side of the driveway. I laid down and secured the lawn fabric making sure to work around the one sprinkler head that was within our work area. We arranged each of the gray tiles so that they were evenly spaced. Then I put in five round flat solar lights (thanks again to the Dollar Store) in between the tiles at regular intervals. The final step was to carefully fill in around the lights and tiles with our extra rock.
It feels so good to be done and I'm so thankful for everyone's help and input. All these projects put together, significantly reduced the grass and grass maintenance. Which really, was our ultimate goal. I think we were able to create something pretty decent using what we had along with a whole lot of creativity and some careful and thrifty spending.
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