Tiny Backyard Makeover

 

When we moved into our new place, I was super excited that even though we were getting a condo we would have our very own yard space! Even a tiny yard is a luxury in a California condo, since we pay to live in a place where we can enjoy the great outdoors approximately 352 days out of the year. But, having a nice little spot to grow some produce and hang out with friends is really awesome.

My first focus was figuring out what to plant. Anyone who lives in California, especially dry-dry Santa Barbara, knows drought tolerant gardening is the way of the future! I’ve always loved the way it looks – like a chic desert oasis – and I wanted to try it out for myself. The trouble is, we have a pretty small yard and usually the big sage/bush/succulent look is best with a nice rolling landscape. Here’s what we had to work with:

So, we dug up the grass and planted a ton of succulents, plus a couple of lavender bushes, kangaroo pods, and a few CA natives like white sage, channel islands bush poppy and matilija poppy. At first we tried to put in a brick walkway since the previous owners had left behind a bunch of old bricks, but that just didn’t jive with the look we were going for.

Instead, we got a good deal on some smaller pieces of flagstone from a local stone yard and put in a pathway around the lower level. We also got some nice colorful natives at the semiannual plant sale at the Santa Barbara botanic garden – if you haven’t checked it out, you should! They have some awesome stuff.

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Once all of our beautiful plants and stones were in, we realized it just wasn’t enough!! So we covered the retaining wall with white stucco, and replaced the old rotten wooden planters with a lower cinder block retaining wall which also got the stucco treatment. I love this transformation because it helps give that California/Spanish style while making everything in the yard look more “on purpose.”

We kept the yard that way for a while and we were pretty happy with it – nice to look at, pretty plants all over, especially with the top level filling in. But there were two problems! The plants on the bottom level would get soaked every time it rained, and I realized the drainage wasn’t very good there. Some of our drought tolerant stuff was actually dying from being too wet and not getting enough sun/heat. Plus, we were never actually hanging out outside! Our furniture was out there but the sitting area was too cramped to ever invite guests out (as you can tell by it not even making it into the photos, ha).

So, time for another change. We decided to pull out all the plants on the lower level and replace them with gravel. It was a tough call because I loved those plants, but we got to transplant a lot of them to other locations along the fence and in the front yard, so it wasn’t a total loss. The gravel install was INCREDIBLY satisfying since the whole project only took about 2 days. We were able to use our flagstone to create a nice walkway through the gravel to the steps, and we used the rest to create a path along the back fence to make for easy pruning and weeding.

To top it all off, we added these outdoor twinkle lights which a friend was getting rid of. Just a couple hooks in the side of the house and in the perimeter fence for instant ambiance, especially at night! Fast forward a couple months to how it looks now, with everything really nicely grown in and thriving in the upper planter… key to backyard joy is sometimes patience…

All in all, it took us a couple of iterations, but in the end I am really happy with how it turned out! If you’re thinking about changing up your yard, try to decide early on what you really want to use the space for, and plan around that. My biggest takeaway was that a small concentrated area of beautiful, happy plants with a nice spacious sitting area is better than overdoing it with plants and not having anywhere to hang out. Plus, the gravel is awesome for our pup – she can go out at night, even if it’s wet, and not get all muddy and gross!

Let me know if this post inspired you and share photos of your backyard renovations! The challenge of making a small yard beautiful and livable is so much more exciting than a big fancy landscape… right?! Ha, ha… a girl can dream!