Groxie

Our backyard is ugly. There is a huge pine that casts a shadow over the most of the yard, and the soil is pretty acidic. There’s a dogrun off to one side, and the ugly chainlink fence around it drives me crazy. We’re renting, so there are some limitations to what we can (and want) to do back there. But the place has promise—we’ve never had so much outdoor space to work with, and John and I want to make it into something beautiful and functional that we can enjoy.

Here’s the rough plan: Tear down weird wooden thing around tree. Build stone path to the dogrun because that’s where we built our compost pile. Plant lots of shade and acid loving plants in the shadow of the tree. Forget about the grass; rely on moss, clover, and mulch to fill in spots between the many plants. Disperse with the idea that we must have a special place for flowers and plants—instead let them run wild.

As you can see, we’re still in the preliminary phases here. We took down the rock wall around the tree, and the wooden thing will come down as soon as we get our hands on a crowbar. But it already looks better with the garden path weaving around it. We built the path for free! Here’s how:

While we were tilling up the soil near the dogrun, we unearthed 4–5 round, brick, stepping stones several inches down. We started scouring Craigslist for other items we might be able to use to make a path. A woman a couple of blocks from us was offering up concrete chunks from her recently broken up driveway.

John broke the discovered stepping stones into smaller pieces, and we gathered up rocks from around the yard. Combined with the free conrete chunks, we had enough materials to start building a path. It wasn’t easy—between the constant rain and the chilly temperatures, our hands were painful and freezing by the end of each of our stone burying sessions. We ran out to work on the path whenever the rain took a break, sometimes for as little as 20 minutes.

Then today the sun came out—no rain and nothing but fluffy white clouds in the sky. We finished the path, using nearly every rock and stone we had gotten our hands on. It’s not a perfectly sculpted, totally flat and even path, but I love it. It’s the beginning of good things for that ugly backyard, and all it cost us was a few afternoons. We gave a new life to some forgotten stones and some concrete headed for the dump.

We have a garden path! Now all we need is a garden…