So, where to start?

The front walk was wrecked last year in the drought. So when the concrete guys were here fixing the neighbor's walk, we had ours taken out, even though we didn't have a plan for what to put back.

DH hated the rails around the front porch, so we removed those and pulled out two of the bushes closest to the now non-existent walk.

The house faces north and the yard slopes from left (east) to right (west) as you face the house. Water ran in a stream parallel to the house from left to right about 6-10 feet from the house and left a lake in front of the front door when we have heavy rain. So we decided to do a dry creek bed for functionality and fun.

100 feet of fun! What were we thinking!

This probably breaks every rule of landscape design, but we did the creek and berm without having totally decided on how to landscape it when finished, in part because DH and I don't completely agree.

Last but not least, a couple weeks after we did all this, we had some really bad winds that severely damaged the three Vitex trees that were on the front of the house. So last weekend we had them cut to the ground. We didn't wnat to lose them entirely and they sucker like crazy, so we intend to let them grow back up from the roots and keep them more as shrubs than as trees.

So the photos and captions follow. I'm going to start a different thread with a couple of photos and some questions we can discuss. I'd like some input on how to finish it off


Ready to start, note the vitex trees still on the corner of the house.

First pass. Hard to dig this clay, even with a Bobcat

Porch rails gone

Shrubbery removed (pittosporum that I hated anyway) New walk will be stamped concrete, 4' wide

Progress. The flat area next to the creek was bobcat access but all the dirt has since been moved next to the ceek so the berm is now close to the creek.

View from the front as we are close to finishing

Bobcar ready to go back. End of creek goes to a drain that crosses under the driveway (it was already there). You can also see where the front walk used to be.

Extra gravel next to mulch pile. Have since used a lot of that for the backyard water feature.

Current view from across the street. Note loss of Vitex.

Current look of front porch

Another view, note that berm is now next to creek.

So, the dirt for the berm was in huge hard chunks of black clay so I've been getting out and raking it every time I get a chance and it is softenining up and I've got it kind of smoothed out now.