The Therapy Behind an Outdoor Space

Here is an “after” video but it’s missing the finished gate we built and some of the little final details we added in (see below at bottom for a gate video)

The beautiful summer months are behind us but that hasn’t stopped me from staring out my bedroom window to the beautiful outdoor garden oasis my husband Steve and I created this past Summer.

So before I dive into why we created this space and how… let me give you a little backstory about our home.
We bought this house in 2015, it was our first home purchase ever so we didn’t really know what to look for in a house (past the cabinets and such… which I will be changing out down the road). The most attractive thing about the house was the neighbourhood and the open concept layout and we also had a great sized yard that was fenced in for our dogs.

What we didn’t see or realize is that the backyard was a hot mess. It hadn’t really been touched or cared for (besides the odd grass cutting) in a very long time. The existing patio that was back there was overgrown with weeds, all the grading/sloping was towards the house so during those rainy days we have every so often, our backyard would become a small lake. The trees/shrubs that were planted were pushing on neighbours fences or were just planted in the most random spots. Also, I found this little detail comical; our next-door neighbour told us that the elderly couple that lived here many years ago used to bury money in our backyard… so when the grandson moved in to help care for them, he would casually dig holes in the backyard looking for you guessed it, jars of money (which I’m pretty sure he never found any… nor have we hahaha).

This is a picture of the space before… this is cleaned up and we pulled off all the English ivy that was obliterating the side and back of the house.

As you can tell by the above information, Steve and I spent literally zero time in our backyard other than when we ran the lawn-mower, picked up dog poop, and chatted with our cool elderly neighbour behind us over the fence. I had been working on a little garden area at the side of our house for a while and we had built raised garden beds for vegetables (which to be honest didn’t bring me as much joy to grow as flowers did, so I switched gears and started growing my own cut flower beds). In this little area, I have my composter (I grew up composting), our A/C unit (which we had redone and moved from the back patio), our water/hose connection is there, my raised garden beds and that’s pretty much it. It was bare bones and lacked any real character or inspiration. We had a small side-yard fence that needed to be replaced there too (see photo above) and this gave us the opportunity to add a proper entryway gate there so I can bring our water/hose to the front yard.

So if you know me, I don’t half-ass anything - I’m “extra” about everything and love to create spaces where people can truly enjoy their everyday lives with ease and comfort (hence my career choice). We had been talking about what we wanted for the backyard and the decision came up to fix the side-yard FIRST before we tackled the rest. It was an all summer-long project for us as we did all the work ourselves and I must admit… I’m slightly obsessed with how it turned out.

So to give you an idea of what it looks like now and as it was being worked - see the gallery below and I’ve posted a video further down.

We decided to go with a fence that didn’t “hide the side-yard” but instead gave us a bit of privacy and high-lighted the beauty we had created (plus walkers that walk by daily, often ask to check out my flowers… which I love). So we started by cutting down this massive tree that was an invasive species in our backyard (I normally would never cut down a tree but it was pushing on our neighbours fence and encroaching our roof). It was such a bother to us and was constantly making a mess with whatever seasonal droppings it nicely provided us.

We chopped that thing down in an afternoon (went through 3 chainsaws and had some help from our lovely neighbours) but we finally got it all down and hauled all the branches and stumps to the dump for proper disposal (we did like 9 truck loads or more). Once that was done, we started rotter-tilling the area to remove weeds and loosen up our clay like soil. We kept hitting roots from the tree removed, so we dug most of those up by hand and used a stump chewer for what was not as easy to dig up (oh by the way, I know how to use all these tools now hahaha).

Once that portion was done, it was a “clean slate” so we started working on leveling out the dirt and making sure it sloped away from our home. My arms by this point were looking pretty toned and tan but when we started putting the fence posts in for the new fence, my arms were like spaghetti noodles. Fence post-hole diggers are not fun and really do require 2 people to use properly (don’t attempt on your own, you will become a viral video or a meme). When the fence post holes were in, we started creating the structure for our fence and we searched high and low for a special linear lattice I wanted. Once the fence was set, we started laying down landscape fabric to cut-out future weeds. From there we found a bunch of large pieces of limestone buried in our backyard (thanks previous home-owners) and we dug those up to use for our stepping stones. We luckily had just enough to create a cool organic style pathway which we leveled out to make sure they were safe and secure. We then went and got a bunch of mocha-toned mulch and started pouring that into our area around the limestone steps and other fixtures in the area. Then we were like pretty much done besides the “pretty stuff” like solar lights, a potting table, chairs etc… The potting table actually was a random side of the road find, it was an old kitchen island on casters that I repainted and repurposed to be my potting table.

When I read this all back to myself, it sounds like nothing and it could have been done in a weekend but it was A LOT of work and literally took us all summer long (oh and we put a new deck on the front of our house this summer too). I’m still so tired just thinking and writing about it but I’m also SO proud of us. We did the thing and we did it well (Que teary-eyed proud emoji).

This is semi-after reveal, because this wasn’t 100% done and your girl sucks at taking videos sometimes hahaha - see below for gate video (Steve waving)

The point of this blog was really to talk about how therapeutic an outdoor space can be but as I was typing this, I realized how therapeutic renovating and creating your own outdoor space can be in general. My husband and I spent many long and HOT hours working on this and it turned out just as we had pictured. After a tough couple years as a couple, we now can hang out in my flower garden, sipping early morning coffee, potting new flowers for our home (and the office), harvesting cut flowers for friends and family, and so much more. Spending time connecting with nature is so important but also creating a space for nature to thrive is equally important. We have bird houses and feeders, bee hotels, and water fountains set-up in this area to care for our local neighbourhood wildlife and it shows. I’ve been tracking the bees in our garden and I’ve seen so many new varieties and some really beautiful butterflies that have come by to check out my new space. When I’ve had a hard day at work or just in general, I go to my garden and I can feel the stress or sadness melt off me. The winter months are hard for us all and it makes me sad to think I can’t just go escape outside but I also get excited thinking about what next Summer will be like!

So if you’re saying “wow” in an Owen Wilson voice while reading this, find your therapeutic outdoor space and make it what you want. You don’t need to blow your budget or take up your whole summer, in fact I sold a bunch of our old and under-utilized things in our garage to fund this project completely (hello paying for everything in cash) and we peppered in some summer-time fun in between working on weekends and weeknights.

It’s possible and if you’re okay with getting a little sweaty, dirty, and tanned then you will have no problem working on your outdoor space.

Anyways, thanks for letting me share a bit about our backyard transformation… I know it’s not cabinetry or kitchens but it is about renovating at least right?

Cheers to finding your happy place,

Markie.

Our u-shaped arch gate that we’ve gotten 1,000,000 compliments on!