When Landscape Concepts arrived on site for the initial consultation there were a handful of projects that needed to be addressed, the homeowners had an upper patio that was starting to sink due to rotting railroad tie steps and walls and wanted a more useable lower patio. There was an existing swale going through the neighborhood and just flowing water from one house to the next, however the water was diverting from the swale onto this homeowners existing patio and had the wooden planter installed to try to rectify the problem.
Here is a view looking back up the property to the rotting out railroad ties.
We removed the existing railroad ties, concrete walls, brick and porch and installed an upper patio landing for the back entryway; multi leveled terraced planters, and a new series of steps to the lower patio. By removing the existing porch it really opened the space up to make the area more inviting and less segmented.
Another view looking down to the lower patio, you can see the use of a segmental retaining wall along the side of the patio. The wall is a sitting wall on the patio side but by adding soil on the back side, the water is forced to stay in the swale.
Materials used for the project are: Mosaic Wall stone in Timberwood Blend Color, Romanstone Pre-Ledge pavers in Timberwood Blend, Dry Creek: Weathered Lime/Granite/Fieldstone Boulders & Cobbles, and Kewanee Creek Skippers.
The other major undertaking of this project was to address the swale and the runoff that was constantly ending up on the lower patio. As you see the yard slopes to a natural swale that ran through the subdivision. This homeowner did not want to create any additional issues for their neighbors’ yard as well and Landscape Concepts installed a dry creek to replace the swale and installed drainage the flowed underneath. For this property the customer also elected to have us run the water runoff out to the front of the house to the sewer rather than letting it flow downstream to the neighboring yards.
We built a free-standing wall and back-filled it to force the water to stay in the dry creek that we built. Two drain boxes in the end basin are piped out to the storm sewer.
