THE PATIO PROBLEM:

ROCKWORK

With 4000 lbs of rock on the way, we rushed to prepare the space for our rock garden. I first pulled out the ivy and wooden siding around the garden bed. The original bed was raised, but we wanted the rock to be level with the brick; so, we removed the existing rocks (nasty crushed marble) and dirt down to two inches below the surface of the brick. Without a wheelbarrow, we moved the dirt in an orange bucket set on my old skateboard.

To prevent regrowth of ivy, we spread weed-blocking landscaping fabric ($30 at Home Depot) over the dirt and secured it with landscaping staples.

A few days earlier, Piper, the deaf, white, odd--eyed cat, helped find a place for the big rock. She just went to a spot and started digging, and that's where Alex positioned the rock. We also borrowed an orange wheelbarrow from our friend Billy at Little Steve's Pizza on Boylston Street, which proved to be a lifesaver later on.

Look at those muscles! My job was to level out the patio - it was uneven in several places, and the bricks around the edge were sinking into the ground. I dug up many bricks and leveled them with sand. Later, we installed the Brickstop edging under and around the perimeter, to keep the bricks from sinking.

   
Here comes a whole ton (actually, two tons) of rocks! I nice young Stoughton man named Artie (pronounced Ahh-tie) delivered our goods.
The riverbed rock just got dumped in a huge pile outsite my gate. Click the photo to see a video clip of the dump (1.4 MB AVI file).
   
Using Billy's trusty (and rusty) wheelbarrow, we moved the riverbed rock onto the weedblock fabric. We spread the rock out with a rake.
To create a more natural look, we planted moss and fern (collected from Brian's backyard) around the stone groupings.
   

We used flagstones (from A.A. Will) as stepping stones, forming a little path through our zen garden. Here, Piper (a true zen cat) shows her approval of the garden so far.

We still have a lot more work to do on the rock garden - mainly, getting rid of this huge volume of dirt that we dug out of the original ivy bed. Stay tuned for updates.

 

 

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