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When we purchased our second home in Woodinville, we had a vision of a larger pond.  It was actually one of the criteria for the new home, that there be land that we could do more with gardening and landscaping, as Rob is an avid gardener.  I support him in that effort, but am a bit dangerous when it comes to weeding.  Rob describes my style as slash and burn. 

We started the pond installation on May 15, 2006 and the first phase of the pond and yard are now completed.  Please click on the links below to see the work in progress and the completion of phase one.

I have provided some music as a background while viewing the images.  It is set into groupings and of course, there is the before and after pictures for a comparison of what everything started and finished as.  What good would it do to have the completed project without seeing the final installation?  The music may take some time to download, but turn up your speakers, sit back and enjoy the transformation of our yard.

One of the questions that many people asked at our open house, was how much land we actually have here in Woodinville.  We have .75 acres of land.  We are the only house in the neighborhood that does not have trees around the house proper.  Our land has many old growth evergreens, but just not surrounding the house.  While that gives us much sun, with the new windows we are able to keep the house cool.  But, when we put in the new furnace, we also added air conditioning.  And, with the heat that we have add during the summer of 2006, we are very glad that we added the air conditioning!

Some interesting facts about the pond:

• We removed over 60 native cherry and alder trees from the forest.
• The pond has approximately 95,000 gallons of water.  As a comparison, the average home swimming pool holds 25,000 gallons of water.
• We are pumping 15,000 gallons of water an hour in the pond.
• There is over 70 tons of rock in and around the pond and I have lost count of the number of plants that we have put in at this time.
• There are two flats of pavers around the pond.  This equals about 3 tons of rock that are not counted in the above item!
• We planted 14 mature trees in the yard.  These included 1 Golden Weeping Willow, one Dove tree, 3 Tibetan Flowering Cherries, 3 Weeping Birches, one Empress tree, one Blue Weeping Pine, one Costal Island Pine, one Half Moon Maple, one Red Lace Leaf Maple, one Blue Weeping Atlas.  We also planted additional trees that we had previously had in containers in our previous yard.
• There is an evaporation of .6 inches of water a week from the upper pond.  This translates to 2 inches for the lower pond.
• As you are looking at the pond from the street, the right side of the yard was raised 3 feet to accommodate the differences in height of the yard.
• We removed approximately 96 cubic yards of trees, undergrowth and other organic material from the yard.  This is one of the dumpsters that we filled four times over.

One interesting point that we discovered as the ponds were nearing completion, is that the two ponds, upper and lower, have distinct personalities.  The upper pond is more meditative while the lower pond is much more private and encircling as you sit by it.

A kingfisher has already found us, but he has not visited the lower pond yet.  We believe that this is due to the old growth trees that surround the back yard.  The upper pond is out there and is easily visible by any bird of prey.  But, no fish will go in it until next year.

March 2007

We are starting the next phase of the yard, and for 2007 we have placed the an order to start the next building phase. 

We have ordered the gazebo for the yard, but looking at the picture below you can see that it is not your typical gazebo.  It is scheduled to be built on site in June.  In the meantime we are looking for someone to do the deck as we thought we had someone lined up, but so far, no return calls after numerous attempts to get this scheduled for this year.

We do have 25 groundcover roses coming in April, and with Rob's surgery and him not being able to do any have lifting, then I will be planting them with his supervision.  I hope that they can grow pretty good on their own as they are starting off with my black thumb planting them!

[ Yard 2007 ] [ Construction I ] [ Construction II ] [ In Progress ] [ The Pond ] [ Swimming ] [ Before And After ]