Landscaping Budgets ... Oh My!

This week we've both been off work on annual leave so we've taken the chance to go over a few ideas and fun around to some places to put together a rough blue print of what we wanted to do when it came down to landscaping. 

We've already organised United Concrete Works for our driveway and a perimeter path at the front of the house in aggregate.  Along with the decking for the portico and outdoor room through Nagel Building and Carpentry and are in the process of setting up dates for those.

But the rest is up to us!

This was the plan that we come up with, it's rather handy having a husband who knows how to do scale drawings, we're going to keep things reasonably simple to begin with, with the view that we can always upgrade and change areas in the future.  Being a picture of a picture it's not overly clear but it gives the general idea.

The front yard will have a garden bed along each side of the pathway lining up with the pillars of the portico.  The front path will be stepping stone pavers, these will also be used in the backyard around the outdoor room and along the back wall, with river stone pebbles between.  The ones that we decided on are the Sawcut Limestone pavers from Urban Stone in 600x600 size.

 

The grass for the rest of the area outside the main bedroom, we will have a small timber enclosed area to hide the bins off to the side this will be paved and be able to open so that we can have clear access down that side if we need it.

 

Down the sides of the house we just wanted to keep it simple as it's only an access way and didn't see the need to go with expensive pavers and also to get the concreting done through that area was more than we wanted to pay. The best combination of price/look as far as the cheaper pavers go we found in Bunnings for only $27.36/m2 which was much cheaper than the $40+/m2 from most other places.

 

 

We will include some pebble work as well just to keep the theme going from front too back.

 

There will be a garden bed along the Northern side outside the kitchen window so we aren't looking out over a beautiful fence and we're looking at doing some sleeper/wood finishes to the area for something different.

 

 

Most of the plants will be native or easy maintenance as we are not avid gardeners!  The only thing I will look at going is a herb garden but I think that is enough to test my green thumb!

The rest of the backyard will be lawn at this stage, I'm thinking of having some bamboo screening along the back fence and to cover the garden shed and we'd love to have a seating/fire pit area out the back as well.  But for the moment costs are a big thing and we'd rather have it function and looking complete now than a dirt patch while we wait for the funds. Ands things like that can be easily added down the line.