Landscaping…The backyard plan

Brett Nutting at JLM Landscaping has been working with us to develop a back yard landscaping plan for the “L” Shaped House. The sketch below gives a general idea of where we are heading with the plan. The basement walk-out creates the necessity for a retaining wall on the right hand side of the patio. Brett plans to address this with two modular block walls. On the left hand side of the walk-out we plan to build a short rock wall that disappears into the hill and becomes a “boulder field” as the hill climbs to the grade at the music room end of the house where a second boulder wall will be built. The outer end of the patio will have a short semi-circle of modular block wall defining a sitting area. The upper wall will die into the hill somewhere toward the middle of the back wall of the garage. We plan to incorporate a small sitting area here as well. The plan includes crushed limestone trails that connect the breezeway door to the basement patio and also provide a connection to the existing trail through the woods.

An important element of our plan is to bring the woods back up to the house. As a first effort we plan to plant 28 trees in the area between the music room “boulder field” and the back end of the garage. The trees will include 5 Blue Beech, 10 Quaking Aspens, 10 Balsam, and 3 Arborvitaes that will be strategically placed shielding the utility pole. Matt at JLM has already picked the trees at Gertens nursery (see the blue tags) and the landscape guys will plant them as soon as the walls are complete.