Welcome to Episode 3 of our Garden Makeover Series featuring our Main Garden which was started in 2019 on an extreme budget. This seemed like such a small yard before this renovation took place. It’s amazing to see how much has transformed in the past 5 years. #budgetgardening #backyardmakeover #organicgarden
In this video we will recap Episodes 1 and 2 with a 60 second run through of the changes made from 2019 – 2021 and then we dive into the changes we made during 2022 & 2023 and talk about what we have planned for 2024.
We will be back with more episodes to cover the terrace garden, the south garden and both of our front yard gardens as well. If you missed Episodes 1 and 2, I hope you’ll check those out next.
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TIMESTAMPS⏰
0:00 – Design Recap
0:23 – 2020
0:58 – Original Terrace Garden
1:13 – 2021 Recap
1:30 – Extending Gravel Path
1:43 – 2022 Recap
2:12 – Extended Fence up the Hill
2:40 – Addressing Mowing Issues
2:53 – 2023 Recap
3:05 – Grapevine Grotto
3:30 – Art talks about redesigning walking path
6:08 – Moving South Garden Fence & Gate
7:06 – Preparing for Birdie’s & Vego Raised Garden Beds
11:05 – Prepping for a Greenhouse
13:00 – Changes Made to Main Garden Fence & Gate
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We are Art & Shala. We have a shared passion for the great outdoors and all things DIY! We are on a mission to teach others about sustainability and taking care of our planet (and our health) through composting and eating better foods grown in our own backyards.
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Welcome to my garden buildout Series this is episode three in the evolution of how I built my main garden over a 4-year period we are going to do a very fast recap through the photos I shared in episode one and two just in case you
Haven’t seen those however if you want to know any details about certain items you may want to watch those videos next but if you have seen them and you don’t want to watch this brief recap you can skip ahead to the 1 minute and 39 second
Mark which is when we finish this quick run through and I will also have time codes in the description I believe in episode 2 we left off at the beginning of the year 20122 or somewhere around there so that is where I wanted to pick
Back up today I may have covered a little bit of 2022 before we ran out of memory but there are a few things I want point out to you today in 2022 we redesigned that Terrace Garden because those landscape timbers were not
Working you can see see here where we had started adding gravel behind that fence in the main Garden here is the new design for the Terrace Garden I used cinder block and built that up that took a lot of Sweat
Equity digging out and leveling it took me a couple of days of messing with those blocks to get them perfectly level we extended the garden fence up the hill and I’ll show you that here in a second and then you can also see how our
Walkway goes down the center of the path between the main garden and the South Garden and that became a big issue for mowing having to drag the lawn mower back and forth over those landscape timbers and the walkway so in
2023 we decided to move the walkway over to the other side so that it left one big open space to mow and then here you see our grape Vines they started out in these pots with just a little string trellis and then at the beginning of
2023 we built our grap Vine Grotto with a cattle panel trellis another purpose for the gra Vine Grotto is you can see that I had a table up on that Hilltop next to the Terrace garden and in 2022 I decided that was not a
Good place for that table because it’s overg grass and every time I need to demo having to move furniture was so timec consuming and annoying hey every good morning sailor and I out here early this morning it feels great and we’re talking about the redesign that we did in 22 was it late
22 or 23 it was like spring of 23 okay and if you look around at the pathway we have now currently it was over about 10 feet is that right maybe five or 10 not even that far 10 feet yeah it was about I
Think we literally moved it like I think these Timbers were in the same place that they were originally but but walkway was on this side right right yeah the walkway was over here and we just moved it over and it gave us more
Sections if you see that it’s kind of difficult to come over here and mow when it was in two different especially this side over here because you could just get the mower down one time right and we did not have gravel over there then
Either right right we did not no so we were having to bounce around to get the mower and get everything cut or sometimes we were just weed eating it yes uh just because it needed it so bad did you discuss the fact you’re
Going to redo the pathway as far as staining it and painting yes yeah we’re going to redo the pathway again but we’re not I don’t think we’re going to move it like we did previously this has worked out good even though I like the
Way that it looked previously I liked it better well and one of the things too that we had last time as I just stepped over this Timber remember we had a low spot here and the walkway was always in water
Remember it was it was very wet right here okay I’m not surprised because this whole area was always wet you put the underlayment down and uh more gravel you just put basically moved all the gravel right yep yeah yeah I
Just scraped all the gravel over and uh we let the grass grow back right here and that was mainly just to make it easier to mow and to give Rocky a little bit more of a larger space to run play give Rocky a little larger bathroom so
Pretty much yeah and as you can see the weeds are kind of running rampid right now the H bent everything that’s green pretty much right now is some type of weed yes the grass is starting to pop but uh and we are working on this so
Please bear with us as we are doing our cleanup this spring it’ll look so much prettier in a couple of weeks we did reposition and redo our trellises for the tomatoes oh yes yeah I saw that one it’s kind of bowed we made may have to
Swap that piece of wood out yep but um yeah this let me get out of the sun here this gate we did have to or fencing we did have to reposition because remember this one curved that way previously yeah I kind of turned this way and we changed
That all up yeah and it gave us a little bit more room back here it did so we were able to get back to this other bed and yeah because this fence I did have it against that bed and I kind of used as a trellis but then I couldn’t get to
The backside of it so once we opened this up I liked it a lot better plus the compost bin used to sit right next to it and so when it would leak or anything would fall out it would fall out on the gravel and I’d prefer it to fall over
There where we can still actually collect it and use it now and also you know this area here was uh had a deck remember we had the deck back here so all this has been cleaned out Y and uh has room for potentially possibly other
Beds maybe yeah we’re to do raised beds the uh metal raised beds birdies and vgo later in the season we’re going to test those out and do a side by side comparison at some point as soon as we have the money to buy those beds and a
Panel we’re taking this panel remember yes I was actually I’ve been wanting to ask you about that do you have some heavyduty um Clippers where we could just cut that thing in half and do eight foot sections you do I do not on me I do
Have I’ve been meaning to ask you that for a while now let’s turn this way cuz the sun you can’t see a thing going that direction anyway okay so let’s go back down here and we’ll show where we
Changed all of this stuff now I have to look back at the pictures to remember but I think it was uh 2021 can’t remember what part of 2021 but that is when we cuz the fence used to did did you ever see the fence art when before
It went up the hill were you here with me the whole time when the fence used to be closed off right there and and this was open you never saw that okay so then it was it was earlier in 2021 that I ran the fence up this way
However at the time that’s what that extra panel is right there right that you brought over it was the panel that went right here and then remember we were having issues trying to mow because I would mow up there and then come down
Here and have two different patches to mow and then have to have somebody lift the mower up here for me because there was no other way to get over here and then finally I broke down and bought a gate so that then when we’re mowing up
Top we can actually open that gate to access the rest of this and that made it so much easier now did you explain the fact that the whole reason for the fencing is to keep Rocky out of the garden area right and give him the play
Area that’s in Rocky uh will get in all of the beds and he’ll use the bathroom wherever he pleases if he could get in there not to mention that he also likes to bark at all the neighbor dogs usually only when
They bark first but he still thinks he’s the only dog in existence he doesn’t know that there’s others out there like him yeah so um having him blocked off from there helped a lot having him blocked off from there helped a lot so
Now all that he can access is right through here as far as other dogs go so that has helped us a lot and uh so so oh so here originally the bridge was positioned differently or did you want to talk about that art and
The gate over there was positioned differently originally and then last year when we changed this walkway and moved it over that’s when we had to reconfigure this because the panels weren’t going to line up correctly so um we oh and we expanded this area because originally I think it was winter of
2022 we started thinking about doing a greenhouse but we him hod around on it looking for the best deal and by the time we made a decision it was like March of 2023 and and I said you know I don’t it’s so late in the season there’s
No point in getting a greenhouse at this moment cuz we live in a very hot climate in Oklahoma so we wouldn’t really have used it much in the summer it would have been more of a winter thing but anyway you can see here we made space for a 6
By8 greenhouse and then when we wound up not doing that Art built me this little what was going to be a pond and a fountain and everything and then um uh we never did finish that so so this year we’re probably going to change some of
This I was even thinking our the other day this gravel here yes I’m thinking remember when I told you that uh I feel like the bridge gets lost now I think it’s because there’s so much gravel so I’m thinking if we move this little Pond
Area if we go ahead and move these landscape timers we could scoop up this gravel and put it in the South Garden since we needed more gravel over there anyway right right y so that’s what I’m thinking but anyway so we we had to move
This fence and uh and we angled the bridge where it used to be straight we angled it and everything but then when we put that pond there I think with just all of the gravel and the Little Pond area it just the bridge kind of gets
Lost now so it didn’t give us more room back here to walk you explain that for sure yeah art was going to show that this uh the previous fence and gate I think was more or less just a tiny walkway yes about right there you could
Literally squeeze through by the St but you could not squat down or anything so you couldn’t actually work on on this side of the bed unless you were standing yes and by moving this what an extra foot two feet so now you have full room
Maybe y yes so I I was able to do a lot more in this bed last year than in previous years but the reason also was because I had left let me back up here and show I had left a hi Rocky I had left like a foot
Wide uh soil pathway going all the way down right here so the fence was over here right and I had left this soil pathway where I had planted a bunch of lavender and stuff trying to use that as a pest deterent of the entire Garden but
Um this area just stays so wet it it has a really bad drainage problem right there and so nothing survived so that’s why we decided let’s go ahead and get rid of that entire bed because nothing’s living there it was just stagnant soil
And uh yeah it it would get really smelly and everything and it just had standing water in it all the time so anyway so we when we moved in order to move the pathway and move the gate because obviously when the walkway was
Over the gate was lined up with it so anyway we had to reconfigure all of that bring this panel down here and then in order to get it to fit and the gate to line back up with this one we had to do some angles here so we’re going fix this
Gate to where it’s not kind of crooked and what not yes yeah this year this spring we’re going to do a whole lot of cleanup and rearranging so you know I’m sorry what were you going to say that if this is going to be a permanent fixture
Here for a while what I can do because these just anchoring to the ground and over time the soil gets you know wet and it kind of leans yes we can take a oh two in or not even inch in a quarter PVC put it in the ground dab a little bit of
Concrete set these in there and it’ll make them fixture permanently here oh I see what you’re if we move and we plan to is to uh you still pull them up yeah and take them out but they’ll at least be secured anchored and straight yeah
Well these there are po you know that right yes but I don’t have them on every single one because when I put this fence up by myself I was so worn out so I kind of skipped I only did them on some so if we go back and put those stakes in on
Every one of them uh it’ll be a whole lot more secure than it is oh it’s definitely secure I just just trying to think of something that we could do as a additional project in the process of cleaning this area up and planting