Connie and Dave Loewan made the most of their unusual corner yard. Instead of simply seeding grass in the side and back yards, they used every nook and cranny and found a way to allow for several different private seating areas for the whole family.
Connie and Dave Loewan made the most of their unusual corner yard. Instead of simply seeding grass in the side and back yards, they used every nook and cranny and found a way to allow for several different private seating areas for the whole family.
The Loewans, who have lived in their Braeside-area home for about six years, were used to bigger acreage living in their former home in Saskatchewan. The open feeling of their current home’s landscaping design attracted them because it reminded them of the wide-open spaces of their previous home.
The split-level is located on a small hill. The Loewans believe that at one time the driveway faced one street but that the former owners took advantage of the slope and moved the driveway and garage around the corner to face the other front street. Then it appears that a new garage was built under a sunroom that faces the side yard, then a wrap-around deck was added to provide a vista on three sides of the home.
“We use all three sides of the deck. In the spring it’s warm on the front deck, so we sit there and it’s above the street so people aren’t looking directly at you. At the same time, you can see the openness of the street and the neighbours’ nice gardens,” said Connie Loewan.
The back deck is on the ground level and the Loewans put a hot tub in that private spot. They also added a door from the kitchen to provide convenient access to the barbecue.
The largest amount of actual yard space is to the side, behind the sunroom. This side of the house faces south and is perfect for gardening, something that was difficult before they re-landscaped to level out a slope.
“The house was on a little knoll so my husband excavated the hill to make it more level,” Loewan said.
Square-foot garden
In Saskatchewan, Loewan was used to a big acreage garden, where she grew lots of vegetables. Clearly that wasn’t going to be possible here, so instead she switched to a square-foot gardening method and grew more than enough produce for her family.
She has four raised beds measuring eight feet by 4.5 feet each. Each box is divided into 32 squares.
“I followed the directions in Mel Bartholomew’s book Grow More in Less Space. It tells you exactly how many seeds to put in each square for each kind of vegetable,” she said.
The boxed system of square-foot gardening allows the gardener to grow more vegetables because there is no space lost to providing paths between the rows.
“You lose space to the rows in a regular garden. Here I only lose one inch to the slats between the squares,” she explained. “At best I could plant three rows in the same space. Now in one square I have three rows and I have three different patches allowing me to grow a variety of vegetables. This way I use every single inch.”
Loewan’s harvest was impressive last summer, as she grew peas, beets, carrots, onions, lettuce, spinach and zucchini.
“The zucchini kind of spilled out over the edge but we still had lots of vegetables. I didn’t grow potatoes, though I could have on the edge. I also grew some flowers – marigolds and lupines – for my own pleasure,” she said.
Lounging around
The only grass that needs cutting now is in the shallow front yard and in the side-yard. To the north-facing front of the house there are large spruce trees and an aggregate-concrete area that slopes with the landscape. The deck with the hot tub and barbecue covers the entire rear yard. A small tree protrudes from a cutout area of the deck, providing leafy privacy beside the hot tub.
In the back corner, a tall latticed fence provides still more privacy beside a shady spot graced with a hammock.
“We wanted the lattice on top of the fence because it adds visual height in that corner,” Loewan said.
The way the yard works now, there are comfortable seating areas on all three sides of the house. These quiet areas are not fenced in, but they are situated in such a way as to be fairly private even though the house is surrounded by other neighbours’ properties.
“We enjoy the expansive view, even in winter. We have neighbours backing onto three sides of our backyard, yet everyone’s space is private. And we’ve transformed a former dog run into a nice garden,” Loewan said.
