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Spring is not just for flowers – it is also the optimal time for groundworks and presents a good opportunity to consider your landscaping opportunities.
Mahurangi Matters caught up with Todd Rochford of Rochford Landscapes to understand the process of building a backyard from scratch.
He took us to a Tawharanui property where he and his team had turned a canvas of boggy mud into functional outdoor features.
Down the bank of the valley, which the house overlooks, a rock retaining wall has been built to provide a flat space for an enclosed veggie garden.
Todd says he is using rock boulders for retaining more frequently, partly because he has a digger with a ‘rock thumb’ attachment, but also because rock walls are a cost-effective, natural and water-permeable solution.
The veggie garden features high fencing, with wire mesh around the bottom rail dug into the ground to prevent rabbits from chomping the cabbages.
The grass that surrounds the house is kikuyu ready lawn – an aggressive species that stays green during a drought.
Though it is barely perceptible, the lawn slopes on a subtle gradient of 20mm per metre, across its seven-metre length, to provide good drainage.
“There’s no problem kicking a ball around, but it’s not going to flood in the next downpour,” Todd says.
He doesn’t know if climate change is the cause, but he says adequate drainage is critical these days, with an average of two to three major water weather events a year affecting households.
In the front driveway, Rochford has built a gabion wall, which is a wire cage holding together carefully placed rocks.
“The cage is filled by hand, one at a time. You still want a flat face despite the cage.”
The wall complements the river pebble, which has been used to fill the wide path leading from the driveway to the door.
“We have used a honeycomb latticed mat as reinforcement beneath the pebbles, otherwise it’s just a load of ball bearings.”
Todd has a few tips for readers who might be at the start of the process of considering their landscaping options.
“The main thing is to have a plan whether you pay someone to do it or just note it down and make one yourself,” he says.
“Often you won’t have the budget to do everything at once. It’s about being able to start in a logical order so that new works don’t ruin prior ones.”
He says drainage is incredibly important to consider early on, particularly for subdivisions on a slope.
“You don’t want to build a $10,000 lawn and then have it flood and have to dig drains through it. Go outside when it is bucketing down and look where the water is going.”
The next thing to establish is your structures, including retaining walls, edges and fences.
“The hardscapes (structures) come before the softscapes (such as plantings and lawns) because the hardscape framework sets the heights,” he says.
Rochford uses string lines and laser levels to carefully align the heights of soils, aggregates and even lawns.
Todd says that a common rule of thumb is that 10 per cent of your development budget should be dedicated to landscaping, but homeowners shouldn’t let that limit them.
His best tip is to use retaining walls to create flat space wherever possible.
“Slope is useless and is hard to maintain. By creating flat space, you are almost buying new real estate. From a property value point of view, you can’t lose by adding flat areas.”
Rochford’s rabbit-proof vegetable garden.
