The Backyard Plan: Build a Wall!
I may be more excited about my little backyard than I am about this jewel of a house. As a lapsed landscape designer, I will shamelessly borrow other people’s ideas to create a space I will love. When I saw this Brooklyn backyard from Landscape Architect Todd Haiman, I knew that I wanted to take his idea of a gabion wall as a feature at the back, framed with wood privacy fencing on either side.
Gabion walls are wire mesh baskets (gabions) traditionally filled with stone. When I saw Todd Haiman’s gabion wall filled with chopped wood, I realized - you can put anything in a gabion wall. My next thought - why not fill it with construction debris from my house renovation? It would keep crap out of the landfill, provide wildlife habitat, and if artfully done, would be a visual treat that also tells the story of the house. I collected a few images of unconventional fill used in gabion walls in my Backyard Pinterest board and below:
I hope to get this edge treatment installed over the next month: cedar privacy fencing on the sides and a gabion feature wall at the back. Another element of privacy screening will be vegetation. I was tempted to consider compact evergreens as additional screening, but I saw a Japanese Red Pine a few yards down and the way it fans out provides exactly the evergreen screen I’m looking for, without taking up much room at the ground plane. I’ll focus on natives for the rest of the yard: a redbud outside the bedroom window, then a blend of sumacs, ferns and Pennsylvania sedge to create a tropical feel in the rest of the space.
Current Conditions:
Currently the yard is surrounded by mulberry trees which made it a regular jungle in the summer and hard to photograph. As I’ve started chopping them down, the yard is starting to take shape.
