Courtyard Garden Before

Our home has this courtyard in the front and ever since we’ve lived here (4years) it’s been unused. When we first bought the house it had a horrible, ugly, dated and unmaintained “pond”. I can’t speak for how it looked when it was first installed but when we got it, it was awful. I yanked everything out of there as fast as I could.

Now, we’re left with an empty space that David has to mow. We’ve talked about several ideas. We wanted to put a floor in, maybe stone, or brick and then have a sitting area. But, the flooring cost stopped us as other things were much more important. So, it’s still empty.

We have a new idea though; we want to turn it into a garden. A veggie garden.

Last summer, I finally planted a veggie garden in the backyard. You see, we’ve never lived anywhere long enough for me to feel I could invest a garden into it. After living here almost 4years I decided it was time.

So, I planted a few tomato plants, a strawberry and some peppers. The strawberry didn’t do very well, the peppers did ok, but the tomatoes were awesome! I loved them!

This year I want to expand and we need to keep the dogs out of it, so the courtyard seemed a natural place. It's about 13'x12', so it’s a decent size for lots of plants.

I want to grow several kinds of tomatoes, okra, peppers, basil, cilantro and some other stuff too.

Anyway, this is the before of the courtyard and hopefully in about 2months it will look very different!
I'm so excited about getting it ready and getting plants planted!