Updated Garden For Lifestyle, Food, and Wildlife

Sara Breuer's garden in Northwest Austin has seen a lot of changes. She, husband Tim and son Henry arrived in . In my job, I do marketing and I work with a lot of creative people and that's inspiring to me. Along with renovating outdated design and inviting wildlife back in, Sara's challenged by soil that is far different from the East Austin garden she left behind. And as I discovered after I left the garden in East Austin, I'm not that great of a garden. I thought I was but it was really more the garden that was a great garden. That soil is is so deep and rich. And then I came here, and this is built on fill so it's terrible soil underneath. Its very clay. It's is hard to work with. This was much more challenging to get things going.

Updated Garden For Lifestyle, Food, and Wildlife

Updated Garden For Lifestyle, Food, and Wildlife

It had undergone a pretty big change in that there is a storm that came through maybe three years before we bought the house and took out large trees that were in the front yard. And then back here was a tiny little deck that was falling off the house and a bedraggled St. Augustine lawn that was getting scorched from having no more trees. In back, they dump the old deck in most of the slanting lawn for a family-sized outdoor getaway. This is kind of the living room. We can watch the birds or sometimes we see deer back there and watch the chickens. And then a dining area. That gets a lot of use when we have people over and you can see a lot of people on there. I mean when I was designing the deck, I wanted to make sure there were distinct areas to make it feel like I was on vacation back here. Rain. I throw all the cushions and pillows on this day bed thing and put a cover over it. I have this big canvas outdoor furniture cover. If I'm here. If I'm not, they stay out.

They sale into summer with umbrellas and shade sails. Then I decided we'll just do all of the umbrellas a pale neutral, partly to lighten it up and and partly because I like the orange on the upholstery and the pillows. And the orange makes a pretty bold statement. So i didn't want to have another competing color. Tim and Henry devised the way to hang these. I kind of had the general idea and I'm like 'Can we do this?' This happens a lot. I go to my hardware place. I'm like 'I'm looking for something that does this. I don't know what it's called and it's probably for something else but I want to make this. How do I do it?' And that's what we did here. We devised some poles by taking the top railing for a chain link fence and clamping them together and then clamping those holes to the chain link fence posts that were sunk into the ground already. And then we rigged up a way to hang them so that we didn't have posts here. This is one of the reasons that I don't have a permanent cover is because I didn't want to have anything blocking the view. Another reason that we did the levels so that it would be to code and I wouldn't have to have railings blocking the view.

Updated Garden For Lifestyle, Food, and Wildlife

Container plants of citrus scent the deck, protected with pop-up greenhouses in super cold winters. In warmer ones, they simply cover and clamp on lights if needed. With a Sharpie, Sara labels plants around the garden with bricks from an original planter against the house. The ones that are out in the sun definitely do fade overtime. Below deck, a narrow strip of lawn makes easy care footing against their greenbelt border. I do like having a little landing area. It does seem to keep things cool. She felt the back fence strip with multi-level plants that don't obstruct the Greenbelt wildlife from deck view. Like spatially like it's a room so I'm looking for things that provide structure and screening and a border, a frame if you will.

Things that have different textures. Different colors. To lighten up the clay, she gets yards of compost and mulch during spring clean up. Deliberately, it gets dumped in the driveway. I have to put a big big work day in so I can put my car in the garage. That's by design. Otherwise, it might sit there awhile. To take a little lawn to a new level, Sara designed a round viewpoint. Shelter rescue Jack approves when outside under supervision since former owners declawed him. Son Henry campaigned for chickens. He loves them. I don't typically let them free-range. There's a lot of predators around here. But when they do, he's the one who helps get them back in. He's kind of a chicken whisperer. They'll come to him.

Henry champions wildlife too. He earned a boy scout merit badge by making the garden a certified backyard habitat. Some of the times when I want to get rid of something that is too old or overgrown or just kind of a maintenance issue. See we have some older plants that are reaching the end of their lifespan. He's like, No no no! You're going to get rid of their habitat. You have to find a way to make it work. We've added lots and lots of plantings. There's a lot of shelter for birds. There's water. We keep water down low for the little guys. Below deck, Sara created another retreat. And on the side of the house, there's another round lawn that's more of a kitchen. She kept the resonant boxwoods that formalized the former septic tank spot.

Updated Garden For Lifestyle, Food, and Wildlife

A lot of friends talk to me about gardening and they ask me gardening questions and they say things like I want a no- maintenance garden. And I say, then you're going to have to hire gardener because you have to do something. She pumped up the usually neglected side strip with wildlife plants and art. And on the neighborly strip beyond the driveway, she went for gentle and interesting privacy borders. In front, she keeps widdling away the lawn. Early on, we left it because at that time our son Henry was younger and he had his little friends and they wanted to run around and they were always rolling around on the grass out in the front and that sort of thing. And for a long time it was nice. Then it wasn't. Since the front has the most sun, they expanded the limestone beds for herbs and plants for pollinators. Tim built raised beds for for Sara's new vegetable gardens. In , they diminished even more lawn with this homemade birthday gift.

Pinestraw is her favorite for vegetable. You can reuse it. It doesn't get moldy. It lasts such a long time and water can get through easily because there's a lot of airspace. And I love the way it smells. Near the house, Sara dredged up grass for a modern ranch-style patio rendition. To capture rainwater, she added a rain chain and decorative urn to her utilitarian barrel. Streetside, Sara's replanted for eventual shade. She understories with perennial layers. A tipi of rasberries mingles with roses. At night, a mason jar glows gently after she inserted the photocell from a plastic solar light. For the whole family the gardens is an interactive spot to apply their creativity together outside. I kind of feel like the actual design of the space and the experience that you have out here is my strong suit. The plant part of it, it's sort of just one of the things that I use to create the experience. I'm not really very good with plants honestly.

Updated Garden For Lifestyle design, double height living room ideas, double living room layout, double living room ideas, new york themed living room, small townhouse decorating ideas, modern living room design for small spaces, modern living room designs 2016, home garden ideas