Do You Use Your Yard?
How to design a landscape where you’ll want to spend time
Dear Avant Gardener, What seed should I have the excavators use when they regrade my topsoil in the backyard? They will be here in a month. I’ll be waterproofing the foundation at the same time. — Your daughter Zoe, Dutchess County, NY
Right timing, wrong question. As your mom, I recommend you ask a broader question: How will you use the backyard? I know you said measuring the whole property was too complicated and overwhelming to tackle this spring, but you might regret not thinking it through before you bring in the heavy equipment. For example, you might want to put in a patio for eating and seating — which would help with your tick infestation, BTW — and you could use the equipment to put in the stone and sand base. You ended up taking a lot of the measurements to order plants for your front woodland garden and back tick border, anyway. [See 5 Steps to Order Your Plants.]
Won’t a patio worsen the water drainage problem?
With a deep bed of gravel underneath and a half inch or so between pavers, your entire patio will act as a drain, especially if you make the stone deeper as you move away from the house, something to discuss with the contractor. In addition, if you plant deep-rooted natives densely around it, they will take up water, too. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. If you’re game to do more planning, I’ll mark up the sketch you did for your plant order with some thoughts and questions.
Go for it, Mom!
Transcription of Heather’s notes on Zoe’s sketch of her property
Looove the idea of a meadow over the septic! And there’s no good reason the paths in front don’t connect; I can shift them so they do. I’m not sure if your idea for the hot tub is feasible, but as for aesthetics, I’m into it :) I’m also open to a divided lawn! I put photos of the views in our shared album.
Yay! Re hot tub, is the ground flat enough? Are there trees in the way? Can you imagine any other problems putting it there?
It’s pretty sloped, but there is a flat area above it. I could run water and electricity, but it may be prohibitively annoying to walk that far. Most usable would be by the house, tucked into a nook. But I like the idea of it being secret and private up on the hill, so let me think about that.
Prioritize the view from inside
Looking at the view photos you shared, the changes we already discussed will make a huge difference: adding a mixed hedge between the house and the road and moving the fence to reduce the size of the dog run. After all, you’ll probably spend more time looking at your yard from inside, even if you spend a lot of time outside, as I hope you will. The yard furniture looks awkward from the living room window; ideally, it should look attractive year-round and draw you into the garden in good weather. On the other hand, the magnolia on the west end of the yard is a magnificent focal point from the bedroom window.
Agreed. Bad feng shui, as you’d say?
Well, design guru Jonathan Berger says I call anything I don’t like “bad feng shui.” He’s right. And I definitely think your current furniture location is bad feng shui:)
View from Zoe’s living room
Haha! Jonathan is always right!
I just got the drone pictures and uploaded them to the shared album.
Wow! These are super helpful, especially the one that shows the whole property. It’s good you had them taken before all those trees leafed out; you can see the natural contours. Did you notice how the northeast area of the lawn carves out a circle? It would make a lovely garden “room” of about 45 feet in diameter — big enough for a badminton court.
Don’t get married to your first idea
Hmmm, I don’t know about my hot tub suggestion. That curved stone wall sits between where the backyard naturally divides between that circular area and the area behind the house.
Yeah, and the ground is probably too sloped. I’ve been thinking it would be good to share the hot tub between the house and the ADU [accessory dwelling unit] I hope to build eventually. So putting it further from the house — maybe tucked under the huge boulder in the northeast corner?
Much better! And I’ve got an idea for how the backyard “rooms” might work. I even think you can fit the archery range you mentioned. I’m going to mark up the drone image and send it back to you.
Drone image by Maurice Jackson, Hudson Valley Aerial
Mom, I love it!!! The only thing I’m concerned about is whether the patio can fit where you’ve shown it. There’s a steep, eroded area in the corner where your path meets the patio. Also, the path to the seating area on the left actually runs in front of the dog run. How big do you imagine the patio?
Think big! I was thinking about 20 by 30 feet to scale with the house and the property. This will give you room for a dining area and a seating area with room to walk in between them. Or you could make it 15 by 24. Both rectangles have one side about 1.62 times the other — the golden ratio. The most important thing is to design it to feel like an extension of the house so you and your guests use it constantly. By the way, remember we talked about flowering raspberries? They’d be a lovely way to stabilize that bank.
Yes, agreed! I’m really excited about how big it’s going to be and how it’s going to float among greenery and feel spacious instead of cramped and stuffed into a corner. I’m going to map it out with flags. . . . It fits! I'm excited! Should my paths be the same pavers or stone? It’ll be more expensive to have them the same if I need them to do gravel, etc. for them… less expensive to do stone.
Few, local hardscape materials
Well, aim to keep the number of different hardscape materials to a minimum, something like three or fewer, preferably local to the area. Are you thinking of a stone that matches the path from the road to the front door?
I don’t have anything that matches it, but I would prefer that to pavers I think. More organic. The pavers for a path I think would make a more modern look and I want more wild.
Ok 😊 You might consider a curved path, then. Could you use stone for the whole patio? And make it oval?
I kind of like it squared, because the lawn will be circular. And I think it will be easier with the pavers for drainage.
Good point.
Good morning! I’m down here in Florida thinking about your garden, as ever:) I wanted to explain the benefit of the paver path: The goal would be to design it to make the patio feel part of the house, with the greenery an inset in it, rather than a path to a separate unit. Doug Kent’s research, for example, shows people are more likely to go into a garden space if the path looks very easy to walk on without tripping, and stone paths are quaint but often not so easy to walk on. Finally, it will not cost a lot to add 10 feet or so more of sand and gravel when all the equipment is there.
Ok! You feel strongly and I do not, so we can do pavers :) And those points make a lot of sense.
You could make the path to the dog run stone so it’s clear it’s a secondary route. And narrower than the path to the patio, which could be extra wide to feel part of the patio.
I like that a lot. And it frees me up to reposition the patio slightly if I need to. In the meantime, I found software that will let me draw to scale on top of the drone image.
Drone image by Maurice Jackson, Hudson Valley Aerial; overlay drawing by Zoe Klee Evans using Archisketch app on an iPad.
Looks great! What are all the circles, though?
Trees. Just so I could see shade.
Oh, excellent!
They’re a separate layer so easy to remove.
Fantastic. You’ve found ways to make the space much more productive both ecologically, but … I don’t know how to say this, spiritually? You’re converting about two thirds of the lawn to ecologically robust native plants. And you’ve created reasons to visit and truly enjoy all the open areas — and even part of the woods by adding chairs and a fire pit. And you’ve even thought out how the ADU and its parking space work within the design.
“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” — Steve Jobs
I love how you’ve fit everything together in a series of simple shapes. I was especially worried how the path from the back do or to the patio would work, but it’s elegant. In fact, all the paths enter various rooms or areas at more or less right angles, which is perfect. Bravo!
Just in time! The excavator arrived today! Thanks, Mommy.
You’re welcome! See you online in a couple of weeks to develop a planting plan for your front woodland garden and back tick border in time for your planting party. Love you!
— The Avant Gardener
Why, How, Wow!
Why?
I’ve shared Zoe and my back-and-forth designing her yard over the course of a month to illustrate the process of transforming a turfgrass yard into an ecological landscape. A traditional American yard requires little design; it’s mostly about picking those few, usually exotic foundation shrubs and a specimen tree or two (Japanese maple, anyone?). They say lawn is the least expensive landscape to install and the most expensive to maintain. It also requires the least thought and work initially, but — I’ll argue — delivers the least reward in terms of time spent enjoying the yard, as well as ecological benefit.
“Good design is actually a lot harder to notice than poor design, in part because good designs fit our needs so well that the design is invisible,” — Don Norman, The Design of Everyday Things
The design process is about imagining how you’ll use the yard and creating spaces for those uses and transitions between them, independent of plant selection. With the design she’s created, Zoe has a vision for the placement and types of hardscaping and greenery she will install, probably over the course of several years. And I expect she’ll adjust the plan over time as the landscape matures and her needs change. But I am confident she will enjoy her yard more because she has taken time to think through her wants and needs and how addressing them will fit together in the space available.
How
Professor Doug Kent and his students at the Lyle Center for Regenerative Studies, Cal Poly Pomona identified these 10 attributes of a restorative landscape based on research on how humans interacted with various outdoor spaces. Zoe’s plan incorporates all of them. How many does your yard include?
10 Design Attributes of a Restorative Landscape
In order of importance:
Security — Encapsulate while revealing immediate surroundings
Accessibility — Stable ways to move through the landscape
Choices — Various ways to interact with the space
Comfort — Opportunities for rest, if not relaxation
Meditation — Places that make you pause and think differently
Sun/shade — Thermal comfort by offering options
Stimulation — All senses: Feel, sight, hearing, smell, taste
Ambient noise — Rhythmic natural noises (chirping, water falling, leaves rustling)
Water — Audible and within reach
Views — From inside the house extend benefits, draw people outside
Wow!
See how turf paths between native plantings draw you into the landscape more than would an expanse of lawn?
Connecticut home of Susan Sheehan and John O’Callaghan (source: The New York Times; photos: Ngoc Minh Ngo).
Related Resources
Want to learn more? Read 3 Steps to a Plan for Your Property.
Ready to sketch? If you’re comfortable working on an iPad, try the app Zoe used, Archisketch.
For measuring, Zoe recommends this digital measuring wheel. (#affiliate link)
Readers Respond
I’m introducing this new section to include incisive ideas, insights, and corrections from subscribers. This one contains a compliment and a well-deserved slap on the wrist from landscaper-to-the-stars Edwina von Gal, whom I so admire for both her design work and her nonprofit initiative to improve landscaping practices nationwide:
Heather, I am always delighted with your newsletters. They are wonderfully well researched and thorough. But, I just had to write to express my sadness that you are recommending the use of glyphosate for managing Ailanthus. We can do better. We will not find healthy alternatives to a substance labeled by WHO as "probably human carcinogenic" if we default to the easy, but toxic, solution. To start- repeated pruning of the sprouts or grinding of stumps works fine. It is super easy and feels great to keep cutting those suckers off! A good way to get out there and visit the area you are transforming. — Edwina von Gal, Perfect Earth Project
Edwina is so right! I’ve edited the glyphosate suggestion out of the column and promise I won’t recommend it again.
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