One Room Fall 2020 Challenge: Backyard Makeover Pt. 1

70sranch
Dec 28, 2020
4 min read

Updated: Feb 17, 2021

We recently re-landscaped our backyard. I'm not sure re-landscape is the right term...it had never been landscaped previously. It was basically a bare dirt pile with a small patch of grass when we bought the house, and then we spread some free mulch, killed the small area of grass (not on purpose, but not necessarily on accident) and then planted "wildflowers" as ground cover. The wildflowers included alfalfa because we briefly discussed getting some backyard chickens. The chickens never arrived, but the mice did! Mice apparently love alfalfa. Basically, our yard had become overgrown with alfalfa and other wildflowers, which sounds pretty, but it was only pretty for 3 weeks in the spring and then it became a wild forest of 4-ft tall dead weeds because we don't have automated sprinklers in the backyard and oh, we live in a desert. On top of that, we had several rose bushes that were out of control (I actually don't like rose bushes!) always covered in aphids, and a dying lilac tree. And weeds. So many weeds.

Our back patio, which is a really nice feature of the house, was dilapidated and covered in spider webs. As a result of our jungle of weeds, mice, and spiders, we truly never spent any time in our backyard. It was time to start over and give our backyard a major facelift.

It was perfect timing. Sign-ups for the One Room Challenge (google it, its a pretty cool bi-annual event!) were fast closing and I was at my wits end with the yard. I really wanted to get the backyard cleaned up before winter, in hopes that the mice would leave before it got cold (and sought shelter in our home). The 6-week challenge started in October and ended at the end of November. Well, it was my first One Room Challenge and we finished our backyard makeover three weeks after the challenge had ended. But hey we finished before Christmas, a Christmas miracle! The backyard makeover was a lot of work, physical and mental (so much math!) way more than we anticipated. The physical aspect of landscaping cannot be understated. There were several occasions where both Mark and I were sore for days and covered in blisters. And we are archaeologists, so we aren't new to hard labor outdoors, shoveling dirt, etc. And the cold temps and short days, since we took this on during winter, were discouraging most days. BUT the results were so worth it all and I now have a new appreciation for landscapers.

Should we have hired landscapers? Probably. Could we afford it? No. Landscaping is very expensive, and for good reason (as I have learned). First, materials are steeply priced. Hardscaping, in particular, like pavers and concrete blocks are $2-5+ a piece. For our 60-foot long garden wall, for example, which we built to be only 1-foot high, took about 150 blocks. The metal edging we used to demarcate and contain gravel and soil from the decomposed granite, was $50/24-linear ft. We needed four times this amount. And we do not have a large yard, it is actually quite small at only 60-ft long x 30-ft wide. Plants. Plants are expensive. I lucked out since we were doing the backyard work during late fall/winter, all the plants I picked were 50% off. But to fill a 5-ft x 60-ft long garden bed, quite a few plants are needed-- I purchased about 30. And we didn't even purchase any trees (the sky high of plant pricing).

All in all we spent around $3,300 (full pricing break-down in Pt. 2!) to DIY landscape our backyard + patio refresh. I would imagine with labor costs, if we would have hired this it would have been in the range of $15-20k according to some landscaping sources I have looked into.

With that but of info.... let's get to the fun part. The photos! I am going to break this into two posts since there will be a lot of pictures. So this post (Pt. 1) includes the BEFORE & AFTER photos. The next post (Pt. 2) will be the in-process pics with all the info on the different projects we completed, including the hardscaping (garden wall, fire pit, paver grill pad), landscaping (DG, gravel trenches, future grass area), fence staining, and patio refresh. So check out the next post for all the nitty-gritty details and cost breakdown & sources!