Mixed Country Oudoor Designs

03/30/2026

Cool idea

Repurposing an old wagon wheel into a divided planting bed stops aggressive herbs from taking over your garden and saves you hours of frustrating weeding.

Planting herbs together in a giant open bed usually leads to total chaos by the middle of summer. Fast growing plants with strong roots easily take over the entire patch and choke out your delicate cooking greens. Finding the exact leaves you need for dinner becomes a giant chore when everything is tangled together in a massive green bush.

Using a heavy wooden frame instantly creates perfectly divided compartments that keep every flavor separated and completely organized. The thick spokes act like a natural barrier to stop aggressive roots from spreading too far across the dirt. This clever layout turns a rusty antique into a beautiful backyard centerpiece that makes harvesting dinner ingredients incredibly fast and easy.

Start by finding a flat spot in your yard that gets plenty of bright morning sun. Lay a thick sheet of heavy duty landscape fabric over the bare grass to stop annoying weeds from growing up into your fresh food. Place your heavy antique wagon wheel flat on top of the black fabric and press it down firmly so the rusty metal rim touches the ground. Fill each pie shaped section to the very top with a rich mixture of organic potting soil and sweet worm castings.

Plant sweet Genovese basil and curly parsley in the deep sections to give their roots plenty of room to stretch. Add creeping golden thyme and spicy oregano near the outer edges so the soft leaves can spill over the rough wood. Cover the bare dirt around your tiny plants with a thin layer of small pea gravel to trap moisture and stop mud from splashing onto your clean food during a rainstorm.

Clip the top leaves off your green basil plants every two weeks with sharp scissors to force the stems to grow wide and bushy instead of tall and thin.

03/25/2026

You don’t need a big pond to find peace and calm 😌 ✨

03/23/2026

I have added some services to my buisness. We now offer water features and backyard living spaces. Custom designed by the homeowner and us. We work together to build a beautiful and serine landscape to enjoy year round. Give us a call for free estimates. No job to small. Let's make your time at home enjoyable.

03/20/2026

03/20/2026

All this beautiful weather. Let's get your outdoor living space perfect.

03/20/2026

A soggy yard that floods every time it rains can be fixed permanently without underground drainage pipes, and a dry creek bed is one of the most practical and attractive ways to do it.

A dry creek bed works by giving water a defined path to follow across your yard, slowing it down, and allowing it to percolate into the soil gradually rather than sheeting across the surface and pooling. You are essentially mimicking what a natural stream does, just without the permanent water.

The construction process starts with digging a shallow channel that follows the natural low point where water already wants to travel. Dig it roughly 8 to 12 inches deep and 18 to 24 inches wide, sloping it toward wherever you want the water to exit, whether that is a garden bed, a low corner of the property, or a storm drain. Line the channel with landscape fabric before adding stone to prevent the rocks from gradually sinking into the soil over time.

River rock in mixed sizes is the right material for the channel itself. Use larger boulders along the edges to define the banks, medium-sized rounded rocks in the middle, and smaller pea gravel to fill in the gaps. Using only one size of rock looks artificial and also drains less effectively than a layered mix.

The planting on either side is what makes this look like a designed garden feature rather than a drainage ditch. The plants here include ornamental grasses like Karl Foerster feather reed grass, sedum for the low spreading mounds, hostas in the shadier spots, and what appears to be lavender along the sunnier sections. All of these tolerate occasional wet conditions followed by dry periods, which is exactly the cycle a rain drainage area goes through.

Lay flagstone steppers alongside the creek rather than crossing through it. Stepping through river rock shifts the stones over time and disrupts the drainage pattern.