Expanding the pool garden

The pool garden — the garden that used to be a swimming pool — turned out so well that we are expanding it. We hired a guy to break up more concrete from around where the pool used to be. It only took him about an hour. The result will about double the area of the garden. Here’s a little section that we’ve pretty much cleared out (this is the corner where killer tomatoes launched their imperial ambitions):

expanding the pool garden

We ordered another ten cubic yards of Local Hero soil mix from American Soil and Stone.

10 cubic yeards of soil

Now, what did I learn back in October? I learned that when a tree service calls and says do you want free bark chips, the correct answer is not “sure.” It’s “how many,” for starters. See the picture of our pile of bark chips, below? Compare to the photo above. It had to be at 30 or 40 cubic yards. (In this picture I’d already moved a lot of the pile, like the path on the right for the mailman.)

huge quantity of bark chips

BTW, the broken up concrete — which is pretty good stuff as concrete goes, with a pebbly surface — is going down the hill to make retaining walls and terracing. Here’s a wall in process.

retaining wall made from slabs of broken-up concrete

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1 Comment

  1. annexensen

    It looks really great! I like your use of concrete for retaining walls too! However, maybe you should wait for your anniversary for more dirt buying like last year–(its so romantic)–oh well its almost valentines day.