Grow: Sprinklers

We all love nice days when we can walk to school to pick Maddie up from kindergarten. The world is waking up and the kids are noticing! Each of them stopped many times along the way and collected treasures along the sidewalks.

Our yard is waking up too! The first hyacinths are blooming and the grass is turning green.

The seeds in the garden are sending up tiny sprouts. Lettuce, spinach, and peas are up and we are still watching for broccoli.

Meanwhile, Mike is working hard on finishing sprinklers in the backyard to prepare for topsoil, grading, curbing, and hydroseeding in the next few weeks!

This is what our evenings have looked like lately... I love the kids' imaginations when they play outside, although I could do without the shoes full of treasures!

Summer is at its end... and we're finally getting grass. Let's take a look at the journey.

I also wanted to share how we approached the process in case it could help anyone else out there attempting to landscape a new home. As with any DIY project, there is a fine line between looking, well, like you did it yourself, and looking professional. Assuming others agree that ours is turning out pretty awesome, I'll share a few tips that pushed us past looking ordinary.

April 25th: Final Grade at Move-in

We got a map of our plat at the very beginning of the build process and started brainstorming. You might think I would be good at landscape design seeing as I studied it in school, but the truth is I only took one design class... and designing your own is rather overwhelming! A few basic steps helped:

- Look at functionality and accessibility. Do you want to entertain, play sports, and/or garden in the yard? We wanted to do all three and set aside space to do so. We put the area for the playset where I can see it from the kitchen and the garden near the garage man door.

- Assess the elements. Where does the sun hit, and at what time of day? Which way does the wind blow? We put our garden on the southeast side of yard where it will get the best sunlight.

- Decide where you want hardscape. The first lines we drew were the fences. They won't go in for a few years, but they define the boundary between the front yard, a more public space, and the back yard, a private space. Again this affects functionality and helped us imagine how everything is broken up.

- Decide on your basic design theme. Do you like formal angles or relaxed curves? I tend to think curves are more visually pleasing, so we used a circular theme for the shapes of flower beds.

- How much maintenance are you willing to do? Many people prefer grass fence to fence so all they have to do is mow it. If that's you, power to ya, but I need room to grow my pretties and I'm willing to spend time planting and weeding.

After we drew up a basic plan, we took it to the sprinkler experts at BJ Plumbing. They provide a free service of drawing up a workable sprinkler system for you! A friend of ours had their plan drawn and then bought sprinkler parts online at Sprinkler Warehouse, where you can get them cheaper. We planned on doing the same but soon realized what a great resource BJ was and stuck with them. Brad was a great help to us! Not only did his sprinkler plan give us somewhere to start, he provided all the details to have a successful sprinkler system, from how many feet of pipe and wire to buy to how to water each zone.

The first thing we did in the yard was stake out and plant our garden so it could produce all summer. We also bought and planted a bunch of trees... some would say prematurely, since we didn't have water to them yet, but we wanted to catch the spring sales and get them established early. I had to hand water both the garden and the trees all summer (which I'll admit was a pain) but I have loved having both!

June 29: Weeds

Meanwhile the weeds grew. To remove them, and also all the rocks that were planted by the builder's backfill, we rented a bobcat and Mike scraped off approximately 2-3 inches all over.

Next step, sprinkler trenches! We hired this out and it was worth every penny. He did in a few hours what could have taken us a year! We highly recommend Andy's Trenching.

July 17th: Trenches

The next 8 weeks consisted of man versus sprinklers. Mike spent every spare minute outside laying pipe, connecting pipe, connecting valves, wiring, installing the clock, burying pipes, testing for leaks, fixing leaks, putting on heads, etc. etc. He had never done it before but you wouldn't have known--he's a whiz. The above picture was when he and his brothers bored under the sidewalks by hand to get water to the park strips. The plants in our yard will owe their lives to this guy!

Sept. 8: Ready for topsoil

2 of 10 loads

We found a guy here in Lehi that delivered and spread the topsoil. He was amazing on the bobcat and had it spread almost evenly in about 2 hours. Once again, I would highly recommend him: Jose at J.C. Trucking. We had to rake it out and wet it down to compact it (above) but a big rainstorm helped with that.

Sept. 15: Curbing

After topsoil we were ready for our curbing. My sister and brother-in-law recommended Clayton Custom Curbing and we were not disappointed. Robbie was so friendly, helpful, and professional. He has been doing this for 20 years and has it down to a science. He also gave us a good deal since we were doing so much!

Again, I think curves are pleasing to the eye, but one thing to avoid with curbing is too many snaky curves. Slow, large radius curves keep things simple and natural. Ours seemed a little dizzying at first, but when the grass and soil back up against them they won't be as dramatic.

After the curbing was in, Mike installed all the heads and ran the zones. We have water people!!! It's a miracle!

All that remained to do was final grading and raking and then hydroseed! We opted for seed over sod since we were doing so much of our yard at once (we did about 2/3 and will finish the last 1/3 in the back next year). We used Enviro-Systems of Utah, who 2 near neighbors have used and had good results with. They use a high quality blue-grass blend and apply it with the wet green mulch.