Trying my hand at a new (to me) design problem 

Some friends recently approached my garden designer wife Lisa about re-doing their home. As a first step, we decided to focus on their backyard.Their backyard  (photo at top) is very wide, about 200′. It varies in depth. Between their back porch and a fenced pool it squeezes down to 6′. At either end it spreads out to about 40′ deep. The house, yard and pool all face west. From the side of a hill in El Cajon, they can see all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

They want to accommodate a number of activities in their yard: a sitting/view area at the north (left in photo), another sitting area with a fire pit in the south area. They want to change most of their grass to water-conserving plants, but keep small grass areas for their dogs at both ends.

Things change when grass is removed. The typical, pre-drought concept was that a yard was all grass, with planter areas cut out around the edges. When you have grass, the typically complicated circulation patterns are easy to accommodate-you just walk across the grass. When grass is replaced by plants that can’t be walked on, circulation becomes a major consideration. Before the landscaping could be designed, we needed to have a hardscape (the hard walking/sitting surfaces) concept.

We were all excited by a beach theme. Our friends had also seen our yard and liked the flagstone. I developed three concepts, one with flagstones and two using a beach theme. I prepared these rough sketches with color. They are meant to show ideas without being too specific about details. In the sketches the pool is on the left, the house is on an angle to the right. The back porch is in the middle right. Click on the images to enlarge them.

“Flagstone Scatter”, the top concept, plays with the spaces between flagstones. When they are set close together, they become a hard walkable area with small gaps. Widely spaced they can become individual stones in landscaping. I contrasted the irregular flagstones with cut stone in a contrasting color, to mark the paths to the sitting areas and the pool.

“On the Boardwalk” uses beach images. A boardwalk, formed with railroad ties, connects the two seating areas. The seating areas are shaped like sea shells, with dog grass areas in their openings. A concrete walk to the pool extends off the boardwalk like an oceanside pier. Below the concept are studies I made of shells from our backyard.

“Bubbles and Shells” also uses beach shapes. The sitting areas and pool path are nautilus shells. Stepping stones and the dog grass areas are bubbles (circles). The circulation between the two sitting areas is hidden in this concept, unlike the Boardwalk concept. The narrow space is landscaped with sand and grassy beach dunes. The porch becomes the link between the sitting areas. A tall lifeguard chair is added to the pool area, providing a vertical accent.

Our friends can select their favorite concept, and add elements they like from the other schemes.