Yarmouth Street Garden . 2 | Garden Gates

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Continued from Yarmouth Street Garden . 1

Here we are standing on the stoop. You'll notice that the completed excavation has uncovered a second ledge below the one which we could see a section of before we began. There's no fighting this fact, so somehow it will have to be incorporated into the design.

At this point I surveyed the garden and did at 1/2" scale sketch (reduced here) using EazyDraw, software for Mac OSX. The overall dimensions are 8'6" wide and 11' deep into the far left corner, the bowfront curves out to about 8' from the front fence. I've sketched in some of the features that we know we want - the planter, birdbath (which we're recycling) and a bench (to be built or purchased).

To work with the ledges, I think we'll build a stone wall along the line of the top ledge resting on the one below. This will make a raised bed which could then be filled with either stones, to form a rock garden, or soil from the excavation which could be planted with a shallow-rooted ground cover such as lamium or ivy.

The large ceramic planter will fill in the left rear corner between the stoop and the bowfront. This will be planted out with something tall since the stoop is very high, and hopefully a plant with year-around interest. To the right is the bird bath, removed from its pedestal and raised up on some stones, next to the water spigot.

To suggest what this might look like I laid out some stones that were on hand and added some cobblestones to show the path to the bench.

Sketch in hand, we're ready to select some stone. The place for stone in Boston is the T.H. McVey Stone Company near the Arsenal Mall, at 662 Arsenal Street, in Watertown. They're old school and don't have a website, but the phone is (617) 923-8866 and they're very pleasant to deal with. Plus they'll deliver once you've selected what you want.

McVey has every sort of landscaping and architectural stone all arranged in piles or on pallets in their huge yard near the banks of the Charles. They also have a really good selection of cobblestones, which are hard to find nowadays, and interesting boulders. It's like going to a museum of stone.

Image ... Yarmouth Street garden.

To be continued.