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DIY Simple Fountain

Everyone loves the sound of water trickling: its relaxing, soothing, and transports us to a warm, sunshiny place out in the woods near a stream where we can get away. The trouble is: recreating this feeling and sound at home while at the same time not spending a fortune. I’ve wanted a fountain at our house for a long time, and I finally bit the bullet and built a small pond in the backyard (click the link to see the article on how to build that) but I also wanted …

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Fountain and Pond Design

I’ve always been fascinated with ponds but a huge, in-ground pond wouldn’t fit or work well with our simple backyard landscaping, so I came up with the idea of adding a pond in the middle of our raised beds with the same look and layout to complement them. Hence the stained wood frame. Building a pond is not really that difficult, but it does require a good part of a Saturday and quite a bit of digging. It doesn’t look deep in the picture, but it goes down below ground …

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Spring 2016 Update

pring is here! And with it comes an end to all the sad, empty landscape that is our yard. All the old perennials are popping up and flowering, the birds are chirping a little louder, and the bunnies are multiplying. I’m a huge fan of plants that come back year after year, and since this is our second year in the home, we finally have big bushy flowers! We’ve lavender lining the front walkway, rosemary and raspberries along the chicken fence, and strawberries in the garden. With all the rain …

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Garden & Raised Bed Design

The day we moved into our new house, I started planning where the garden was going. I knew I wanted pretty raised beds and a unique style. (not just the big 4’x8′ beds you see all over) I came up with this idea for ‘4-corner’ approach with a pond in the middle and started building. Each of the 4 corners is 8′ long at the longest sides, and then 4′ on the shorter 4 sides. So each box gives me 48 square feet of planting space. The walk ways in …