Ocean Friendly Garden

This is what 2 tons of rock looks like...didn't fit in the hybrid

If you read my past post about Home Improvement Adventures, you know that Ryan and I have been slaving away to transform our yard from this:

Not our car...this picture was taken by the previous owners

to this:

Looks like we added palm trees but they were always there

It took a lot of hard work and we still have a few loose ends to tie up (note the grass growing in the gravel parking area...whoops) but we are nearly there! The plants growing in the dark brown area (where the pine straw is) are kind of hard to see but eventually will cover the brown area and will be green...and pink and yellow...they have little flowers! We also hope one day to make our driveway permeable (by cutting into the concrete) to further prevent runoff. 

Our front yard now requires no mowing, is drought resistant, salt tolerant and is not a wuss when it comes to massive amounts of wind (welcome to the beach). It also retains rainwater, preventing runoff into the ocean and river. We used no pesticides or fertilizers and followed the directions set out by Surfrider Foundation on their Ocean Friendly Gardens website. 

It may seem like more trouble than it's worth to create an OFG until you read about the problems plaguing our waterways, like the Indian River Lagoon. There are massive unexplained deaths of manatee and dolphin in addition to the decimation of sea grass beds and the proliferation of harmful algal blooms :(

If you want information about how you can make your yard more environmentally friendly, it is fairly simple! In Florida, there is a lot of information available about "Florida Friendly Gardens" here and Surfrider has a lot of information about "Ocean Friendly Gardens" on their website (which started in California but whose principles can be applied elsewhere). It can be a lot simpler than our yard (we did this to ourselves!!) or as complex as you'd like it to be. The main idea is to reduce the pollutants that can get from your yard to the waterways by reducing runoff, using less or no pesticides or fertilizers, conserving water and using native plants. 

Here are a few photos of the process:

Shovel champion

Dug up with one shovel...including all the St. Augustine grass

Putting down cardboard is an eco friendly way to keep weeds from growing through rock

More cardboard

Ryan takes better pictures than I do

Pink purslane is native and considered a weed by some

Perennial peanut

Plants we used:

In the mulched areas (lighter brown): texas sage, yellow bulbine, adagio and one olive tree. 

In the pine straw area (dark brown): ice plant, pink purslane, perennial peanut. 

Have you tried to make your yard more eco-friendly? Let me know in the comments! I'm always willing to learn more :) 

Home and Life Improvement Adventures

We are such old farts. Our days have been consumed by "working in the yard" and "trips to the Home Depot". It's pathetic. We should be hang gliding through volcanoes for Pete's (and our own) sake! I must say though, there is something very satisfying about taking something and transforming it into something completely different and (I think) better. For instance, our latest projects are:

-installing gutters on our 1960's home. Well, some dudes from Home Depot will be installing them. I'll be watching from the comfort of my air conditioned living room. For some reason, many of the homes built in our area during this time were not built with gutters. What a terrible idea. The amount of rain that torpedoes down from the roof to our lawn is unacceptable. If I wanted a moat it would be perfect but, silly me, I'd like a regular yard that doesn't threaten to throw my house off it's foundation in a water slide of disaster.

Holy crap, we're landscapers!

-creating an Ocean Friendly Garden(OFG) out of our yard which currently consists of random grass, weeds (which are kinda pretty when they flower), and a handful of palm trees. Lucky for us, Lindley's Nursery is just a few miles away and they sent a lovely plant expert out to create a landscape plan for us for a nominal fee. We really needed their help....it's so overwhelming. Now we have an idea of what we can do to make our yard low maintenance and friendly to the oceans and the environment. We have already planted Oliver, the olive tree pictured above, some bulbines and Texas sage. All of which are drought resistant, can handle the high winds at the beach and aren't total wusses when it comes to living in salty soil. When Oliver is fully grown, he'll be kind of a bad ass. Google it.

-building a boardwalk path from the gravel parking area to our front door so that you don't have to walk through the grass or all the way over to the driveway which is like at least 3 feet away. Mostly it looks cool and beachy and we really, really wanted it. Sound logic.

Next up? A dry river bed to reduce runoff (a key element of an OFG), mulch or rock to put around plants, more plants, rain barrels for the gutters and converting our sprinkler irrigation to a drip system. All of this will take some time though because who knew how frickn expensive things would be?! A million dollars for gutters, 2 billion gazillion dollars for wood and 3 kajillion dollars for olive trees, rocks and screws. Good lord.

In other, good money news: we are on track to pay off our monster student loans in 3 years!! Woohoo!!! This means sticking to our budget but I know we can do it. Even though I want to spend all our money on gutters and olive trees....I will be strong! We are even going to try to eat a completely vegetarian and diary free diet for the next 30 days to save money and be healthier. We already don't eat a ton of meat but cutting out cheese is going to be just awful. Lentils and chickpeas, let's do this! Does anyone have any delicious vegetarian/dairy free recipes they'd like to share? I need all the help I can get :)