Backyard landscaping

Boy, was this a busy Summer working in our backyard! I thought I’d highlight them here. If you’re following along on my DIY journey, there’s a chance you’ve seen these projects. In case you missed them, I’ll add a link to each so you can click through to see all the details. I’m curious about which one is your favorite Summer of 2020 Landscape project? Please leave a comment down below and let me know.

Table Of Contents

Enlarging the Bark Beds
Building a patio around the Maple tree
Creating a division between lawn and garden
Creating a heart-shaped patio
Enlarging the garden beds
Creating the park
Supplies Used
Where to buy supplies
Previous landscape projects

Enlarging the Bark Beds

This first project set me off on a Summer full of landscaping projects. My goal for this year was to work on the garden area, but before I got to that project, I decided to revamp the bark beds that I had installed just 2 years ago. You can see that project here.

This project involved removing sod to reshape each bed, placing down ground cover, (mostly newspaper), laying down new brick for the border, and adding fresh bark. See all the details by clicking here.

Building a patio around the Maple tree

When the bark beds were completed, I had a lot of rectangular & square bricks to use elsewhere. While working on the bark beds, I set a few of the bricks in areas where I thought I could use them. The first project I worked on was this patio around our Maple tree.

This project was not as easy as I thought it would be. I was just going to lay the bricks around the tree and voila! have a patio. The reality was that the tree roots laying close to the surface meant that I would need to level the bricks. In order to level them, I would need to add a base of soil & paver sand under them. To keep the base in place, I would need to create a ‘box’ around the perimeter. So, this project included leveling the bricks with soil & paver sand, building a wooden box to hold the base and bricks in place, adding paver sand between the bricks & painting the frame. See the details & all the pics here.

Creating a division between lawn and garden

The next project was to create a little path from bark bed to bark bed. I used several of the rectangular bricks from the bark beds and added a variety of other types of bricks, flagstone & pottery.

This project was accomplished by laying down newspaper then bricks, then adding sand & gravel. Initially, this project did not involve removing sod, as I decided to just build the path on top of the grass. After I had it finished, I found that I couldn’t roll the garden wagon over the bricks without them shifting. The ‘fix’ for that was to add a metal bridge, which worked wonderfully! However, the bricks that lay closest to the lawn still shifted if I happened to step on them. So….I did remove some sod to add a buffer of bark. Once the path was done, it created a nice division between the two areas of the lawn. All the details and pics can be found here.

Creating a heart-shaped patio

After the path/division was done, I decided to use some of the blocks to build a little patio under our Maple tree. Here is the start of it.

I also decided not to remove sod for this project. One of the reasons was that the grass was sparse due to the tree roots being close to the surface, but the main reason was that pulling up sod is really hard! The project included spraying the grass with vinegar & dawn dish soap to kill it off (that just sounds so cruel), laying down brown paper sacks, newspaper & landscape cloth, arranging the bricks & flagstone to create the patio, adding sand & gravel then adding bark around the edges. I also sprayed the patio with a sealer. Here is the link to all the details.

Enlarging the garden beds

Now, I was ready to work on the back garden area; the plan for this Summer’s landscape design. The first step in creating the park-like feel to the area, was to enlarge the existing garden beds as our plants had outgrown their space.

This project was all about sod removal! When we first moved into the house, there were no garden beds. My first landscape project back then was to create these garden beds by removing sod. After removing the sod, I took it to a friend who has property. She has utilized all the sod I have removed from our yard and it’s growing great there! The details of this project and how to remove sod is located here.

Creating the park

All of these projects led up to the park vibe we were looking for. There was just one more step to take – adding bark to the area.

This last piece of the landscape project of 2020 didn’t take a ton of time. I sprayed the rest of the grass with the vinegar & Dawn mixture then laid down several layers of fine bark. I did have to move that bark and add a layer of landscape cloth/newspaper because I had several areas where the grass grew right through the bark. Had I taken this step first, it would have saved me a lot of time. Find the details here.

Well, there you have it – 2020 Landscape Projects! Which one do you think made the biggest impact on our backyard space? Leave your thoughts below! Thanks for following my journey!