Landscaping – The Outside of Our House
In December of 2003,
having grown out of our condo on Halstead St.,
we bought a house in the suburb of Naperville.
Our condo, in the northeastern corner of a six flat, had a secluded rooftop deck with a view of the Chicago skyline and had spoiled us with respect to outdoor spaces – we needed something with a degree of privacy and a nice view…we did NOT want to be looking at someone else’s back yard! So, when we found a place that backed onto a retention pond, we pounced.
The pond behind the house:
The house in the spring after we bought it.
As you can see, it was a very ordinary house on the outside.
Fortunately, we loved the inside of the house as much as the pond: it was very well laid out with a room off the kitchen that I could use as a studio, 4 upstairs bedrooms (one of which KC could use as an office), 4.5 bathrooms, and a full finished basement with a ‘guest suite’ for the overnight visitors we knew we’d have, an exercise room (or 6th bedroom) that could be used as a wine cellar, and a media room.
(Press here for pictures of the interior.)
It also had gorgeous views of the pond and the various birds that visit it – ducks, geese, egrets, and a loon (some of the houses on the pond do not have a view of it). We moved in on December 4, 2003.
The view from the back in winter, a month after we moved:
Some of the spectacular sunsets we’ve seen since then:
The lake at dawn reminds me of Brigadoon:
The previous owners had taken superb care of the house but, built in 1987, it WAS 16 years old and although everything was in working order when we bought it we knew that many things would need to be replaced. I THOUGHT the first thing we redid would be the kitchen which had an electric cook top and Formica counters. I NEVER imagined that the outside of the house would become the focus of our renovating efforts because the exterior appearance had never been an issue. I didn’t love the outside of the house but I didn’t hate it either (except for the front door, which I didn’t care for). It was a non-issue for me. The inside – creating a comfortable, inviting, and workable living space – was my primary concern.
So it surprised me, that first summer, when KC suggested that we replace all the windows. Yes, some of them were drafty and the mechanisms were stiff but we rarely opened them so I never gave them a second thought. KC was right, though, to keep our energy costs under control, now that we had a much larger space to heat/cool, it made sense.
We decided to replace the front door, too, after KC read an article in Consumer Reports which said the front door was one of the best investments a homeowner could make as it was the first thing a prospective buyer saw. I also realized that by replacing the windows I could have grids installed in them, something I’d always wanted.
In November of 2004 Illinois Energy Windows and Siding replaced all 39 Lincoln windows with Worthington.
The front of the house in the fall, right before the windows were replaced:
And the following spring, with the new door and windows:
The following spring, when I suggested that we replace the burning bushes in the front that were obscuring our now gorgeous front door (and didn’t get enough sun to turn them red in the fall), KC surprised me again by suggesting that in addition to replacing the bushes we redo the front stoop and walkway and add retaining walls around the beds.
It took me a while but I finally found a contractor with the same sensibilities that we had. In addition to replacing the stoop and sidewalk, he suggested we remove all the evergreens, which were overgrown, and the birch in the middle, to open up the front of the house. He also offered to grade the land so that the rainfall would drain away from the house.
The old sidewalk:
Chris Nikolas of Sod Off Scape Shapers started work on July 14th 2005.
First they removed the birch and burning bushes:
Then the evergreens:
Then, they laid down a foundation of gravel:
Over that went a layer of sand:
And then, finally, the bricks:
Because the old stoop was part of the foundation and we didn’t want to remove it, the new stoop was built OVER the old one! The size of the old stoop and the curvature of the bricks we chose forced us to make the new stoop bigger than we’d intended to. Then, because the new stoop was so big, we had to increase the size of the walkway to keep it in proportion. We ended up with much more brickwork than we had intended to but we LOVED the way it looked!
The new stoop:
The new walkway:
And the new retaining walls:
The next step was to replace the plants and I was very apprehensive about this.
Press here for pictures of the deck on our Halsted St. condo
KC wanted color. I didn’t want anything ‘high maintenance’ but I also didn’t want anything boring or monochromatic and I was afraid the two were mutually exclusive. By now, though, it was early September and the nurseries didn’t have much available so Chris did what he could. I wasn’t thrilled with the way it looked, everything seemed to be the same size and shape – round – and there wasn’t much color difference either, but KC convinced me to wait see what it looked like the following spring.
The plants in the retained beds:
The plants along the walkway:
The grass starting to grow on the newly graded lawn:
The perfect pots Chris found for us for the stoop
(notice how badly the house needs paint….
and the rusty light fixtures….more on that later):
The following spring, the beds looked a lot better than they had the previous fall, but I still wasn’t thrilled with them. I wanted lush diversity and I didn’t have it. I put in lots and lots of annuals to try and add color, rearranged some of the smaller plants and brought in a few new ones. By the end of the year I liked it better but it still wasn’t crazy about it.
Spring 2006:
In this shot you can see the light fixtures we put in to coordinate with the new door:
Fall 2006:
Part of the problem was that KC had agreed to let me replace our back deck, which was peeling badly, and was being supported by bricks where the stairs had fallen off, with a patio! This was great – I’d always wanted a patio – but it meant I didn’t have much time to spend on the front.
The old deck, taken the spring after we moved in (before it started peeling):
And in the fall before we replaced it:
For reference, here again is a shot of the trees in the back:.
Were really happy with the brickwork in the front so we used Chris Nikolas of Sod Off Scape Shapers again. He suggested we remove two of the three birches in the back – they were too close together and all were unhealthy as a result -- and all the overgrown evergreens. He also suggested a seating wall around the perimeter. We used the same brick colors that we’d used for the front stoop and walk.
Because of the size of the trees in the back Chris suggested we hire a specialist to remove them so we brought in Bartlett Tree Experts (We were happy with the work they did and have retained them to manage the health of the remaining trees on our property.) Once the trees were out, we gave Chris the go-ahead.
Work started on April 9th, 2006.
First they removed the old deck:
Then, they leveled the ground. The house is on a hill and, as you can see in the photos above, the old deck was two levels. The level on the west side, accessed by the kitchen, was higher than the one on the east, accessed by the family room. We wanted to drop the patio down on the west side, add 2 steps up to the kitchen door, and slop it gently towards the east.
Over that went gravel:
Then sand:
And then the bricks:
Less than a month later, on May 6th, 2006, it was all finished!
The east side, in front of the family room:
The east side,seen from the lawn:
The center:
The center seen from the lawn:
Another view of the center:
The west side, in front of the kitchen:
We had intended to extend the western edge of the patio in front of my studio and, eventually, connect it to the walkway on the western side of the house, which would also, eventually, be brick to match the one in the front. We ran out of money, however, and had to truncate it so we rounded off the edge about where the old deck ended and added some stone ‘steps’ to transition to the side.
The western edge, truncated:
The stone steps leading to the side walkway:
The stone step on the eastern side, for balance:
At this point, we also had NO money for plants! So, with my sister Linda’s help, both physical and in the form of cuttings from her garden, I created a semblance of ‘softscape’ to get us through the summer.
In between the two seating walls in the center, KC put in a stone path. On either side of that, Linda and I moved the hostas from the western side of the house. Some lilies and sedum from other areas of the garden were also moved as was a spare smoke bush from when we did the front. The cuttings from Linda’s garden were scattered around and I added a few annuals for color.
The stone path from the patio to the lawn:
Right after this, we decided to have the exterior of the house painted. Actually, we got an unbelievable deal from a student who, with two colleagues, did the entire job for under $2000, so we couldn’t afford NOT To do it, given the way the paint looked. The color turned out much lighter than I expected but I like it. The BEST part of the new paint job, though, was the garage: it was now dark red to match the new front door! Here are some after shots:
I had intended my first pass at the back softscape to be temporary but by the end of the summer I LOVED the way it looked:
Summer 2006:
Fall 2006:
A sunset over the new deck on a rainy night:
One thing I DIDN’T like about the new patio was that we had lost much of the privacy that the overgrown bushes had provided. When people walked down from the street to the pond (it is community property for the resident in the association) it really felt like they were trespassing because they could see and hear us and we them. I needed to provide some kind of screen but every time I mentioned it, KC would go ballistic over the cost. He wanted privacy too but having spent a small fortune on the hardscape he refused to spend any more.
The following year, 2007, I actually did a lot of gardening because I still didn’t like the way the softscape looked, but I was frustrated by the amount of work the garden took, resented it, and did it begrudgingly. So much of what I did died, or was eaten by rabbits, that I was discouraged as well and didn’t take many pictures. I was trying, desperately, to create height – both in front and in back – without spending money on expensive bushes.
Here is the only shot I have of the back, with our new patio furniture:
A few shots of the front in the spring:
And in the summer:
At the end of the year, in October of 2007, when the local nurseries were offering half-price deals on all their bushes, I convinced KC to let me add a few. In the front, I replaced the dying mugo pine with an azalea, and put a black lace sambucus just off center in the magnolia bed. In the back, I replaced the infected burning bushes with 3 arborvitae.
In an attempt to prevent trespassers from cutting through between our house and the neighbor’s, on their way from the street to the pond, I put in 3 larger arborvitae on the west side of the patio and on the east side a witch hazel and a plum.
To create a screen between our house and the people walking along the edge of the pond, I created a new bed at the southern edge of our property and put in 4 smaller bushes that would turn wonderful colors in the fall. I also put three smaller bushes in the beds behind the seating walls to create some height. I couldn’t wait for spring to come, to see what they’d look like….
WOW!
Spring 2008 was GLORIOUS!
We had a relatively mild winter with few thaw freeze cycles and in April we were inundated with rain. So, at the beginning of May, the garden was popping! The creeping jenny ground cover I’d tested as a possible replacement for mulch – which is notorious in many ways (it infected our maples with a root fungus) – was taking off and its light green color set off everything growing around it. KC asked me to add more and I did.
First, a picture of the new azalea, in bloom on April 27 :
Here are some pictures of the front taken on May 8, 2008:
And a whole bunch taken during June and July:
The first to bloom were the Husker Red Penstemom:
The annuals:
Next to bloom are the little wine cup lilies :
Followed quickly by the big daddy hosta :
As the lilies and hosta wind down, the black eyed susans open up :
Some views of the whole front of the house:
In a few weeks, the Lemon Queen will bloom, then the sedum, and finally the toad lilies. I am looking for other late blooming lilies to intersperse with the little wine cups so that we’ll have flowers in August.
I am REALLY happy with the front of the house now except for one thing. I would like to replace one of the boxwoods – the one in front of the dining room window -- with a dwarf blue spruce, and will do so this fall, when they’re on sale. I planted some boston ivy this spring which is doing well and will create some additional height without obscuring the windows (a security hazard), in a year or two.
Moving to the back of the house…
If spring in the front was glorious, in the back it was absolutely breathtaking!
The pictures below were taken on MAY 8th!
The Brunnera Macrophylla were already in bloom and their blue flowers contrasted beautifully against golden edges of the Aurora Marginata hosta,
Two weeks later, the lilac and Jacob’s Ladder opened up, and the smoke bush was a gorgeous dark, dark red.
Late in June, the lilies bloomed, followed closely by the hosta. The smoke bush, however, is suffering:
In this shot you can see the three arborvitae that replaced the sand cherries on the eastern side
You can also see the pots I created to bring some color ONTO the patio
and, on the far left, the folding picnic-table-cum-plant-stand that was our kitchen table until we replaced it:
In mid-July the hollyhock buds started opening:
And the hydrangea which had NEVER bloomed, now had 5 flowers:
Once the lilies wind down, there is not much in bloom in the back…
I need to find some August-blooming shade perennials:
A shot of the new witch hazel, plum, and globe arborvitae:
Closeups of the beds:
Long views:
Some shots of the back from INSIDE the family room:
The window through which these shots were taken:
As much as I like the back this year, I am not as happy with it as I am with the front. The beds are too narrow for the size of the patio so I will be widening them. The shots below show the spade edge I dug to mark the new size of each bed.
I won’t be adding any new plants but I will be dividing the existing hostas and sedum and using them at the outside edges. The plants in the beds will be spread out into the new space.
When the walk on the side of the house is complete (more on that later), I will move the two spirea bushes at the foot of this maple (on the right side of the photo) to the sides of the mud room door, and will put a ring of lilies and Russian sage around this corner similar the one on the western edge of the property.
The situation with the walk on the side of the house is as follows:
On June 7th we gave Chris Nikolas of Sod Off Scape Shapers a down payment on the new walkway. He was supposed to start work on June 25th but, since June 17th, the last day I spoke to him, we had not heard hide nor hair of him.
At first, I was furious, Chris is normally very good about returning phone calls, but after six weeks had passed I was afraid something bad had happened to him. The problem was that I couldn’t find anyone who could tell us what his situation is. So, we waited, hoping he would suddenly appear to do the work.
On July 28th I was woken up by loud pounding on the side of the house. I sprang out of bed and ran downstairs. YES! Chris’s guys were there, taking out the old walkway! They explained that Chris’ mother, who lives in Greece, had cancer and that Chris had been out of town arranging for her care. Although we’re sorry that Chris is going through this (we, too, are caring for aging parents) we’re glad Chris is OK and back on the job.
The work was completed on August 7th, 2008. In addition to putting in the new walkway, he expanded the size of all the beds in the back incorporating the bushes I’d put in the previous fall as well as the 2 lilacs and 3 rhododendons I purchased earlier this year (which had been languishing in pots). He also cut a spade edge along the eastern side of the house connecting the back to the front. Eventually we will add low retaining walls around all these beds.
I will add pictures as soon as I have some good ones.
My goal, eventually, is to have a secluded garden as lush as the deck of our Halsted St. Condo:
The deck of our Halsted St. condo
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Last Revised: August 8, 2008
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