Our own backyard, Colorado

Doing it ourselves: gravel, raised beds and drip irrigation, worked out with our own homeowner tools.

We test our homeowner tools where it matters most to us: at home.

The yard had a compacted, uneven surface, patchy drainage, an irregular shape that made the area easy to misjudge, and a 1 m drop along the left fence line, where the fence and part of the yard were slowly slumping into the neighbour’s property.

We turned the lawn edges and bare ground into gravel paths, raised beds and drip irrigation, working out every quantity of soil, mulch and gravel first with the same free calculators on our Homeowners page.

Before and after: bare ground and lawn edges turned into gravel beds and a raised garden bed.

The legal boss and professional hole digger checks the new raised bed. The wet circles show where each drip emitter waters the soil.