2011 - After Christmas Holiday

Well after our holiday to the South Island was rained out we got home to discover that Wellington had also had a lot of rain... and our garage was flooded. It seems that when the piles were re-done they removed one of the small walls from the back of the garage and this let in all the water that had run straight under the house. So... time to start digging up the garden, fitting a proper drainage channel and retaining wall to keep the garden away from the garage and drainage channel all behind the garage.

Bye-bye Wendy's flowers... they were re-located to the side and back of the house (don't know if you can see them very well but I also bought some hebe's to plant along the front of the house - they're only small at the moment but they will grow. The channel was dug out by hand (mine and Steve's) and then retaining wall was spaced away from the garage...

Steve did all the cutting of wood... I supervised ;)

The gap between the garage and the retaining wall was filled with gravel to aid drainage, and a black drainage pipe was put at the bottom to drain the water out to the drive.
We used another board to hold the earth away from the retaining wall with some larger rubble (from the fireplace - see next post) to help the water to drain away...
A bit more gravel and backfilling the earth ready to level it out and create a rockery.

Earth backfilled and levelled across with a slight slope to the front to keep the rain away from the house... followed a few weeks later by weed mat, river pebbles and grasses...

... one low maintenance section all finished. Oh and we also put frosting on the garage windows so we could remover the spider infested mesh, and bought a little stone koru for the garden, the shape of which is based on a new unfurling silver fern frond and symbolizing new life, growth, strength and peace... perfect :)