Before & After

Let’s study the before picture…the yard is narrow and deep. The door that you can see in the photo is a second unit. When I was asked to do a drought tolerant landscape design for this house (and granny unit), my client wanted something with color but was easy to maintain. She wanted to create a natural border between her and her rental unit. The focus from her living room became the Basalt fountain in the foreground. This type of fountain is my favorite…the water recirculates from a basin below ground, is covered by a screen, and cobbles hide the basin and pump. Whether you use drilled stones, pottery or build a natural waterfall, having a below-ground basin is much easier to maintain. Very little light penetrates to the water below, so growing algae is not a problem. Also, there is no standing water, which means that mosquitos are not a problem either! The top dressing, instead of bark, is a small type of crushed rock. It sits on top of weed fabric, and the overall effect is not only clean looking,  but the plant’s roots stay cool and moist in the soil, plus the rock can easily be blown with a blower to clean up fall leaves, without the stones blowing away too!