Since we are still having trouble envisioning the final hardscaping around the house we hired a professional landscape architect to draw up some plans. (www.nancyhandhigby.com) Our main goals are to plan circulation routes (parking, entry access, and walkways) and to minimize focus on the basement entry while still allowing access to it for use as a workspace/root cellar/mudroom.  Other considerations are siting a future garage, integrating a vegetable garden utilizing the rainwater cistern for gravity-feed drip irrigation, controlling erosion on the slopes, and locating a possible area for a fire pit and sitting outside.

We are concentrating on finishing the home this year, but may be able to have our excavator do any necessary terrain reshaping while he is working septic/final grading later this summer. We hope to install much of landscape ourselves wherever possible, and plan to phase the work over the next few years.

In the meantime, we are sowing grass seed and putting hay down to prevent erosion. We’re also still cleaning up the trees that had to come down to make way for the power line. We’re hoping some of these logs can be used in landscaping, others will be turned into firewood. The brush pile is growing, and we are looking into either buying/renting a wood chipper to turn it into mulch for future gardening/landscaping projects, or getting the fire department to do a controlled burn.