A greenhouse, of course.
It's in the works! A greenhouse has been on my wish list for a long time, but it wasn't the right time and space is an issue. As large as our backyard is, losing that back third of the yard to swampy water made us feel pressed for space. And there were so many things to do first - redo the garden, repaint the garage, fix the water problem in the way back, redo the back corner, clean up along the chain link fence.
Then there's the "where does it go?" issue. At first I thought that the greenhouse needed to be near the garden. Maybe leaning against the garage or sitting where the swing set currently is, making my timeline 10 years from now when there's no way my kids would ever want to swing anymore. I hoped that finishing the drywell project and eradicating the water in the way back would help me decide where I wanted my future greenhouse - and it did - but not in the way I expected.
The greenhouse is going in that white box:
This is behind the sunroom, next the dining room, in the dead space we never use, beyond the backyard fence. It's sort of backyard, sort of side yard, and totally wasted space.
Why do we have dead space here? When we first moved in, we planned on incorporating it into our backyard. There was an ugly chain link fence that ran from our backyard all the way to the street and it made our poor neighbors crazy because it prevented them from opening their car doors easily. When we took out the driveway fencing, it just didn't seem right to put any fence against their driveway at all, so we did the fence line in line with their backyard. It looked really good when they upgraded our shared fence to the same 6ft wood privacy fence. And we left it that way for years because I didn't see any other option without encroaching on their driveway.
The inspiration to put it here hit in the form of my next door neighbor. She said she was thinking about putting a tiny greenhouse in her strip of dead space in the backyard/side yard area. They have an addition off the back and side of their house so their space is completely different, but it made me realize that we had A LOT of dead space to play with and I could do the greenhouse in a decent size there! We could turn the gate 90 degrees on the same post its already on, add a single fence panel with two posts and incorporate the whole section into our backyard AND leave a full 4 feet of walking space between the fence and our neighbors driveway. Perfect for the lawn mower for Mike. Easy for our neighbors to open a car door if they pulled in to the very end of their driveway (not that they ever do). And all we would need are two posts, one fence panel and two bags of cement.
Even better, it was the ideal spot for a greenhouse. Southern/Western exposure for sun all winter. Two walls against the house for ambient heating and protection from the wind. Also close enough to the house that we could run string lights and/or a heater if we needed to. And since it's a "portable" structure we don't need a permit from the town.
So here is the newly incorporated backyard space:
It's going to be great to have a greenhouse here!
We removed the fence panel on the right to make it more open, and I trimmed the quince way back so it's even more open visually. I'm not sure if we'll cut down the fence post or leave it. It might be handy for running globe lights to the greenhouse, or I might use it for a climbing vine because I'm so into vertical gardening these days. So I think it's going to stay, at least for now.
We transplanted the hostas that lived where the gate is now to the back fence. We will probably transplant the other half of the hostas to the back as well, but it's SO HOT right now, it's not the time for transplanting. You can see them here lining the way back fence...
The pavers are the freebies our neighbor gave us before they moved, the same ones we used in the pathway for the back garden. We put weed blocking fabric down on the bottom to block the weeds and then placed the pavers on top. The ground was pretty even already, but not even enough for pavers. Mike put down a layer of patio sand to even things out and it's great now.
We have the kit already, it arrived much faster than expected. It's a Palram greenhouse in silver trim, 6' x 8'. I kind of wanted the green trim (or ideally I wanted a medium matte gray but that isn't sold in the US apparently except on one model), but in the end we agreed that silver would blend with the house better. We won't need this until October, BUT I'm excited to have it up early so I can figure out how I want to set it up.
I'm so excited about this. It can be used for transitioning seedlings outside. Potting up my dahlia bulbs and begonia bulbs much earlier in the season so we can get a head start. Overwintering plants that would die otherwise (delicate plants, like my citrus trees, will go inside because they need steady temperatures all winter long). There are plants that just don't happen here without a greenhouse (like the ranunculus) because we don't have the right weather. It's going to be great!
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