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A space to live in!

Scope: The Pierce's moved into a new house and really wanted to create a new outdoor living environment. When I visiting with the Pierce's it was apparent that they liked to spend as much time outside as the weather would allow. They liked the sound of water and wanted to extent the seating area beyond the deck. One of the challenges with this project was that the grade of the yard sloped away from the house and to create a usable area we were going to have to build a large retaining wall to level out a nice space for an "outdoor room."

As we designed the landscape we decided that a water garden would be nice. Also, the look of the tumbled pavers gave it a nice old world feel. One other thing was that we knew that we would have to work on irrigation for the new beds as there were going to be way to many trees and shrubs to be watering all the time.

Materials: The large retaining wall was built out of Anchor Highland wall block. It gives us a nice strong wall with some character as all the blocks are not the same width. The paver patio is done with Belgard's Dublin Cobble in a Fossil Beige color. This is a tumbled paver which gives a new patio an old world feel. The water feature was installed using Aquascape Designs system with the boulders being Moss Rock.

The water feature is approximately 2,500 gallons and can support about 170 inches of fish. No project of this size would be just right without night lighting. In our busy lives half the time we are home it is dark so low-voltage lighting was used both in the water garden and terrestrially. There are some nice planting beds that compliment the water feature and paver patio.

Overall these improvements have undoubtedly improved the properties value and created a beautiful outdoor living environment. .
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The Birth of my blog!

I will be posting thoughts, photos and ideas that will inspire you to dream about your backyard lifestyle.