We started working on the yard before we had the house entirely unpacked. Needless to say, we were pumped to start building our beds and freeing ourselves of a giant lawn! Together my husband and I drew up a garden plan that included plenty of growing space, and outdoor kitchen, chicken coop, fire pit, gathering circle and possibly a tilapia pond. Once the plan was drafted I began laying out an outline of the new flower beds on the lawn.
Future flower beds marked out with kindling. Can you tell where we ripped up the rotting deck?
We removed the sod from the marked paths and piled it onto the future flower beds before adding lawn clippings and the like. On top of that we added a thick layer of cardboard and then 4-8" of veggie garden mix soil from our local composting center. To prevent the raised beds from avalanching onto our paths we edged the beds with bricks.
The layers of our sheet mulch: sod, lawn clippings and leaves, cardboard, topsoil/compost/sand mix and eventually a final mulch layer (not yet applied in this picture).
A "cross slice" of the edge of the bed. This section still needed its sand trench installed.
Almost done!
