The area I have to work with for my Japanese Garden is rectangular in size. The area borders the side of my home from the front of the house to the very back. The area is wider from the front of the house to about half way back, due to the back part of the house being an addition we put in a few years ago. Given this, I have two areas to work with each having different widths. The total length of the area is about 60 feet with the first half having about a 12 foot width and the second half being approximately 10 foot across.
The area was being used primarily for storage with two small yard storage containers containing gardening tools and a few trash cans containing gardening and top soil. The area of also the “dead zone” for any potted plants that either died or I had not have a place to plant or display.
The ground within this area of was covered entirely with square stepping stones and there is a wooden gate separating the back yard from the side yard and a wood fence separating the side yard from the front yard. Not very visible in the picture are about 200 paving stones and bricks left over from our back yard projects.
Finally, this part of the yard is home to my central air conditioning condenser.
Day one: Clearing the area. During this part of the project my sons and I removed about 1/3 of the stones and then realized that its was going to take us most of the day so I headed over to Home Depot and enlisted the help of some of day labors to help.
We agreed on a price of $180 to split between the three of them to move the stones from my side yard to my driveway. It took them almost 3 hours to complete the job and they did a really great job stacking neatly in the driveway so I paid them $260.
Day One: Total invested in the project: $260. (Hoping to get some of this back after selling the bricks and pavers)
GARDEN BEAUTIFUL 