Our Garden Plans

OK, this spring, after we bought our house, we covered most of our front yard and all of our back yard with black plastic to kill the grass because we wanted to do pebble walk ways and raised beds.  Flowers for the front yard and mostly veggies for the back yard.  We measured our yard and then used graph paper to plan out our beds and walk ways.  Here is the plan for our back yard :

 

 

Our next step was to figure out what we were going to use to make the raised beds out of.  First we were thinking of using cedar boards but that can be quite expensive especially with the amount that we want to do.  So Rich was thinking maybe cement but I wasn't thrilled with the idea.  Rich then found this really cool process called hypertufa that is way less expensive than wood, very durable, light weight, great for the plants and looks like ancient stone.  He showed me some wonderful pictures of the internet of pots and planters and I fell in love with it.  Here a few ideas he showed me:

 

I was sold on it.  We began to dream of all we could do with it like stepping stones with scriptures on them, pots in the corners of our pathways with zinnias, milk weed and golden rod in them for splashes of color and attracting some good bugs for your garden.  Large pots for our back patio area.  So many wonderful ideas and such a great price.  Rich's experience in ceramics is a big plus as he is so good with making molds.  This morning we went to Lowes and got a small amount of materials to try it out.  I don't think I have had more fun since I was a little girl and was making mud pies.  It is so easy that even Mary loved it.  We will see how our stepping stone and 2 pots turn out in a few days here.  Martha Stewart has a great video on how to do it.  Here is the link to that: http://www.marthastewart.com/268962/hypertufa-pots 

 

Here are some pictures of our project this afternoon.  If you want to know more about hypertufa, just google it on the computer and there is tons of pictures and articles on all kinds of projects.  We are so excited to start doing this and making our garden look like a garden in Ancient Rome.