hen we first bought our home earlier this year, we didn’t notice the slight negative slope of a small portion of the yard back toward the house. Overall, the yard was nicely sloping away from the house so it wasn’t very noticeable. It wasn’t until our basement flooded that we realized we needed to fix it and have a long-term solution for drainage.

In the midst of knowing we would be tearing up our entire lawn, we knew if we were going to put in a fire pit–a dream of ours–this would be the time to do it. Thus began our complete overhaul.

While our landscaper worked with the city to get our rain garden approved (for drainage away from the house), we went ahead with replacing the driveway. It was something we new we were going to have to do when we purchased the house, but we were planning on doing only the two affected squares. Once we started looking at all of it more closely, we realized the original driveway had been poorly poured so we could either fix the two squares now and know we’d have to replace the whole thing in a few years OR we could redo the entire driveway now.

Because we didn’t have enough going on (ha ha), we decided to have the entire driveway redone. It took about a little over a week and our driveway now is one of the strongest on the street. We could drive a semi on it if we want to (which we don’t).

While we were on vacation the beginning of September, work began on our backyard. The primary concern, of course, was drainage. This was the pipe system we rigged up after the basement flooded to output water from the sump pump into the lawn. It was only a temporary solution, but it worked to get the water away from the house. (Notice, all of the green grass photos were taken before our endless weeks of no rain.) 

The photo on the left was taken in August; the photo on the right was taken today (October). The oak tree that was in the middle of the lawn was moved to the side and you can see part of the rain garden in the bottom right. All of the drainage spouts from the house are now buried in the ground and drain directly into the rain garden. The lilac bush up on the side of the house by the air conditioner unit was rocked in since, aside from that bush, nothing else could grow there except weeds. The retaining walls (you can see one of them in the photo above) were extended to help steer water further down the lawn and not into the fire pit/patio area.

Currently, the grass is growing under the blanket of straw (I keep seeing little green stems peeking out!). Kevin has been diligently spending his evenings watering it. The trees that were replanted (two of them) look dead right now, but it’s also October so we are going to have to wait until spring to see them come back to life.

And, of course, one of the benefits of all of our years of hard-earned savings came in very handy when we still had enough after our down payment to be able to make these necessary changes and be able to create a social space in our backyard!

I’m constantly reminded of how impatient I am when I look at our backyard and think, “I wonder what it will look like when the plants, trees, and grass grow!!” (There’s also still a little bit left of the sitting wall to finish. You can see it if you look closely.) For now, I’ll just roast some more marshmallows and enjoy the present.

Landscaping by Lawn & Landscaping Solutions in Iowa City.