Marcela and I got into a lengthy (and involved) discussion this morning about landscaping and I was eager to plot some ideas down on paper. (Well, digital paper) Max and I have thrown some ideas around about pavers, flagstone, cement and shapes and I thought it might be fun to sketch out some of them to share with friends and family for feedback. (Plus it will also help when it comes time to getting bids)
I use
Omnigraffle everyday at work so I decided to browser through
stencils online to see if there was anything that might help me plot out the backyard. Score! Found one for
gardening.
I started with a rough sketch of the backyard as it is. I wanted to send this empty plan to Max and Marcela so they could come up with their own plans. I tried my best to be true to the proportions but it was hard to imagine since I am rarely in the backyard and don't remember how big (small) it is. It took me 10 minutes to put together with various stencils in Omnigraffle.
I showed the picture to Phil (who sits in front of me at work and is working on his own landscaping) and he gave me a couple of ideas of things he saw on the web. I immediately took a liking to two of them.
I've been hearing more and more about colored cement, or even painted cement, and I thought the colors in this example would be perfect for our Spanish-style house. It might be fun to come up with a pattern for the main area as well, or would look great as big tiled slabs. I do want to explore what kind of coatings we can add on top to make it look more "clean".
I thought this example with the vines was a great way to make a place look full without taking up too much space. We could do something similar off to the side and put a lot of large bushy pants and flowers to create a garden-like seating area.
So now it came to plotting on Omnigraffle. I found the stencil incredibly easy to work with. I was able to shrink some of the trees to make into shrubs and grow some tiles into slabs. I played with overlaying opaque layers to create a "cement" look. It's such an easy and visual way to plan something out -- I should have used something like this for furniture!
So the basic idea here is that the main part of the backyard will be made up of these colored cement "tiles" and the base color will extend to one side, which is the side we use for trash and storage. The other side will have the colored tiles layered on top of grass with a small strip of flowers and plants near the fence. We'd cover as much of the white fence with vines as possible and have an area on the top right dedicated to fruit trees and our more colorful plants. I think this layout works well with the house because the elememts closest to the house still look Spanish but we can have more fun with colorful flowers and fruit trees away from the house.
I think this is a good layout to start with. We can always do flagstone or other hardscaping in place of the cement or add a curve to the border so it doesn't look so boxy. We can move the patio furniture closer to the grill and add a little patio terrace (is that what it's called?) and string some cute lights and lanterns. We can get a combo table/fire pit and get larger, lounge chairs to go around the table. We can shape the area more with potted plants and trees too. I can't wait until I have time to do an option 2 and 3. :)
