Guest Garden: Hernando House

In the interest of sharing many types of gardens, today, we have Cait from Hernando House to share her plans for a future garden.

I’m so excited to be guest posting for Amanda today! However, when she first asked me to do a guest post she mentioned that she was hoping for something garden-related, and unfortunately I have a brown thumb and our backyard has been looking like this recently:

And this is an improvement, trust me.

My husband, Robert, and I have plans for a reclaimed brick patio in the works, so we recently sledgehammered out some oddly placed concrete (old deck foundation maybe?) and began chipping away at some wavy tile (which we think might cover a former pool deck or an amoeba shaped patio). The plan from there is to cut the wavy portion of concrete off about 12 inches out from the porch wall for drainage purposes, and then re-tile with some terra-cotta tile we got from my parents, which should coordinate better with the brick patio than the mismatched indoor tile below. We’re hoping to only spend about $250 between materials and saw rental, especially since we were fortunate enough to get reclaimed brick from friends and family. You can read more about our planning and budgeting here.

We have had to take a break from working on the yard recently, thanks to Florida’s afternoon & evening summer showers and the thick smoke from nearby wildfires. During this forced break, I have been daydreaming about what our backyard will look like when everything is “finished” (which honestly won’t be for quite a while, even after the patio is done), and refining the plan we came up with this spring (originally created with Better Homes & Gardens Plan-a-Garden, since refined in Photoshop). Robert and I are drawn to a rustic industrial look with modern influences, so most of what we have been planning follows along those lines.

This is the layout I daydream about; not to scale.

We built an outdoor shower surround along one side of our house this spring, and though we have yet to plumb it we know it will get a lot of use after summer yard work and it’s already great for washing our two dogs without getting a drain full of dog hair.

Our galvanized outdoor shower surround.

We’d like to have a walkway from the patio to the outdoor shower, most likely using gravel and stepping stones like the picture below.

from Pinterest

The fence along the back of our yard needs to be replaced and we are considering something galvanized, to fit in with the look of the outdoor shower. This should be fairly simple (assuming our neighbors also like the look) because we already know about working with galvanized sheet metal from building the shower.

from Pinterest

In one corner of the yard we envision a shallow pool made from a livestock tank, an idea that we saw when The Brick House featured the one below (from bigBANG Studio, and it has become very popular on Pinterest recently). We also plan to put a low deck around our pool.

bigBANG studio

I would like to have a couple of galvanized planters along the edges of the patio, filled with Lemon Balm and Purple Heart plants (also called Purple Wandering Jew; the purple plant seen below), like the ones Erica from Urban Grace Interiors has in her garden. My aunt recently told me that Lemon Balm is a great natural mosquito repellant, and my parents have had good luck with Purple Heart plants, so hopefully even my brown thumb can grow those. As for the rest of the yard, we’re planning to try some hardy, drought resistant grass.

As for furnishing the patio and deck, I’m constantly changing my mind. We will probably work with our existing table and chairs when we first finish the patio, and save up for some newer things while we make up our minds. Currently I’m loving the combination of the Ikea Applaro chaise lounge, the Regal Rochester Metal Frame chair from CSN, a couple of Portfolio Outdoor Wall Lights from Lowe’s, and a couple of strings of Commercial Patio String Lights. The plant shown is a Lemon Balm from here.

Thanks so much to Amanda and Ben for letting me guest post today! I hope you enjoyed reading about my plans for our backyard.

Posted by ourhumbleabowed on June 28, 2011

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