As I was walking around my garden a while back, I realized a couple of things. One, I love my garden and the peace it brings me (no shocker there). Two, I put so much work into it, yet unless I drag a lawn chair around, there is no place to actually sit down and enjoy the fruits of my labor except at the top of the garden looking down from the deck or firepit, which really is not the best place to view it. This sent me on a quest to remedy the situation. For a few weeks, when the weather cooperated, I took a chair and set it in different spots, sat down, and looked around to see how the garden looked from that vantage point. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that a really good spot to sit was next to the greenhouse. I can see most of my plants, I do not look directly into my neighbor’s yards, and it is further down into the garden so I can look across, down, and up to get different and more immersive views. I know that it can get hot here in the summer, but as a sitting spot for 10 months of the year, it will work perfectly.
Now that I found the spot, it was time to legitimize it. I had some stones left over from a garden path project that took place a few years ago and I decided they would work well for this project. Then came the digging. It is winter so the ground is wet and easier to dig than when it’s drier, but there are also lots of rocks in my soil which take time and effort to dig out. It was also on a slight slope so I dug things out until they were basically level. I raked it as flat as possible, then added a couple of bags of sand and a couple of bags of pea gravel, raking them out after each addition. A level came in handy here.
The stones I had on hand were flagstones in all different shapes so laying them out was a puzzle. I also found a round stone I really loved at my local nursery so I used that as the center and built the rest around it. It took some time to piece them together, and inspired a trip to a garden store to pick up a couple of small stone pieces to fill in the spaces.
The layer of sand and pea gravel came in handy when it was time to level the stones with one another in order to make a flatter surface. I then filled between the stones with tumbled gravel.
Overall, it took me a few weeks, working one to two hours at a time, but the result was well worth the effort. I now have a small (5.5 feet square) but lovely patio that really did not cost much since I mostly used stones I already had on hand. I am really excited to see the garden come alive this spring from my new vantage point!
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