In the beginning

The side yard consisted of mud and moss. Grass does not grow well here. After putting in the patio at ground level outside the back door, it was time to start working on the rest of the grand landscaping plan.  Unfortunately, I didn't take many pictures.  Here are two of the very first things we did, though.

Scott added "fertile mulch" to make low beds on each side of a new crushed-rock path.

 He put in four evergreen huckleberries, the plant I kept hearing nothing but wonderful things about. 

Three vine maples, too; two are in this picture.  They didn't do very well the first year; they grew much more slowly than the third that spent more time in sun.  The second year, though, they leafed out beautifully and looked very happy.  That's still fourteen months away, from the time this picture was taken!

Here's the third vine maple, the one that has absolutely thrived, along with the pacific wax myrtle and the other two evergreen huckleberries.

You can see some rock; we had a draining problem at the end of the patio. Water simply pooled there.  So, they added a french drain, and rather than trying to grow plants that will get stomped or overwatered, put in some little rocks on the edge of the patio on either side of the path.  The plan is to grow things over and around them to make them look more natural.

The sod that was put in was well dead by this point; Scott re-seeded and put tarp over it after doing the beds and path.