Shop Products
Houzz Logo Print
bobby1973_gw

Transition Ideas from Lawn to Garden

bobby1973
9 years ago

Hi folks - we moved into our newly constructed home about 8 months ago. I spent much of the Spring and Summer fleshing out the landscaping around the foundation of our home. The next area that I'm attempting to tackle is this wooded area behind our home. It was full of many mature, deciduous trees as you can see in the photo. I thinned out the area a bit by cutting down dead and just plain sick looking trees. This allowed me to plant a few large White Pines, just to mix in some large evergreen species. My long-term plan for this space is to create a nice 'wood land' garden, filled with shade-loving plants and lots of meandering paths. My immediate problem that I'm facing is how to transition from my backyard grass into this wooded area. I just finished the Japanese footbridge shown in the photo, which is situated fairly in the middle of the wooded area. You can see where the grass abruptly ends and the wooded begins. It just seems too harsh of a transition to me. Does anyone have ideas for softening this transition? So far I thought of two options. First, the wooded area is full of large size boulders (2-man job), which I was thinking of lining up along the dividing line between grass and woods. It wouldn't be a continuous line of boulders. I would leave maybe a 6' opening every 20' or so. This would allow the footbridge as the formal entryway into the wooded area, as well as maybe 4-5 openings through the rock border. I really have no other use for these boulders. The 2nd option I was thinking of was to install a simple split rail fence along the border with pressure treated wood. I would leave evenly spaced 6' openings with this option as well, so you have alternative access to the wooded area besides the footbridge. I would then use a portion of the boulders to create a dry river bed under the footbridge and take the remaining rocks to my town's debris site. I would love to get your feedback! Thank you kindly.

bobby

Comments (4)