How We DIY’ed Our Rock Garden

UPDATE: See the full reveal HERE. THE BIG REVEAL IS TOMORROW!! Sorry for yelling, but I just can’t wait to show you guys the courtyard makeover. Today, though I just wanted to show you guys how we constructed the rock garden.  This courtyard was overgrown and ridiculous six short weeks ago.  After living here for two years, we started to realize that with our lives being so hectic right now, we just couldn’t keep up with all the different stuff that was going on in this space. Plus, about 6 months out of the year it was brown and dull.  So, we decided to simplify with a maintenance free rock garden and year-round evergreens and couldn’t be happier with how it turned out.  So, if you remember this is what we started with six short weeks ago…

This post contains affiliate links for your convenience. Some product was provided for this project.  All opinions are 100% my own.  Please see my full disclosure policy HERE.

We had all these beautiful flagstone rocks all over the front and back yard.  The guy that lived here before us had some beautiful ideas, but the maintenance of what he had done was just too much for us to handle and it didn’t’ leave a lot of space for our kiddos to play.  So, we started cleaning up and realized we had a ton of these rocks.  These gorgeous, expensive rocks. We knew for a while we wanted to transform this space into a rock garden, but it took the ORC to get us into gear.

So, I started by removed the wooden planks that were outlining the concrete sidewalk. I used a reciprocating saw to cut out the 2×6’s and then they just popped right out.

After I pulled out all the trim, I removed the rock from the garden area and tried to lay it out as much as I could.  This was the best way to get a good look at the rocks I had to work with.

We received two beautiful lamp posts from LampsPlus and we love them.  They completely change the look of the space.  I decided to go ahead and install them at this point so that we wouldn’t have to dig up any of this stuff later.  I usually do most DIY stuff myself, but when it comes to electrical work, especially the outdoor stuff, I call my electrician.  He came and ran some waterproof lines out to the spot for me.

Then, I used Quikrete fast-setting concrete mix to set the poles.  It is the easiest way to set a post, you dump it in and then put some water in.  Make sure it’s level and that’s it!

I put down a lot of plastic sheeting.  Our main goal here is maintenance free, so we wanted to keep the weeds at bay as much as possible. Then I started stacking rocks.

It was like a fun game of Tetris.  Once I had the wall the way I wanted, I pulled all the sheeting back.  I wanted it to be under the rock, but we needed more dirt.  A lot more dirt.

It took about 8 truck loads.  It was a LOT of work.  Once we had it all in place, we pulled the sheet back over the dirt. I wanted just a very few easy to maintain holly bushes.  This space looks so dead in the winter that we wanted something that was green year round.  I cut some X’s in the plastic and planted the boxwoods down into the dirt.

At this point, we are almost done. We filled the rest with local river rock.  We love the look, and better yet it’s cheap. All the dirt and all the rock we needed was about $160 total.  But, shoveling that stuff was a NIGHTMARE, haha.  We needed two truckloads.  We might get one more at some point, but we want to see how it all settles down.

And then it was done!  We love how it turned out.

 

The river rock is so pretty.

It’s cool how the rock just sort of worked. This corner is my fav.

 

Be sure to pop over and see the full reveal HERE.

Thanks for stopping by!

April

Rock Garden DIY

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