Townhouse

A flood in the back yard motivated this family to renovate. The drainage contractors decided the answer to repairing the damage was to dump about 17 yards of sand in the back yard. At some points, the sand was 18" deep. Our biggest ecological challenge was to make the soil viable without loading all the sand into trucks and transporting it once more.

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With a lot of back aching manual labour, we dispersed the sand throughout the garden, traded it for the heavy clay in the side garden, and added several yards of compost. We think the key to why the garden grew so well and so quickly, in what was basically a beach, is that we used mycorrhizal fungi on every plant.

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The design objectives for this garden are a dining area for up to eight people, a separate area with overhead reading light for night time reading, evening fragrance, and a way to hide the water main access without covering it entirely.

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Probably the best compliment to our work is the owners wanted the garden installed to sell the home. Nine years later, they still live here because they love the garden.