The front of the house has always been what it is. Wood stacked in front of the windows for the wood burning stove and a plot of weeds under the bedroom window. We never bothered to plant anything there because the bedroom window had to be replaced. Just one of the million and one things that required time and money. Last fall, after the window was installed, I found the perfect fountain on Facebook Marketplace in Watsonville, finally moving in this direction. The time came because we needed dirt to fill in the huge pit around the septic riser. We seem to have good timing where projects blend at the right time.

After a lot of dirt was dug out, we decided to fill up the planters with random chunks of cement, pavers, sandstone, anything we had. I bought a yard of Little Noyos rock at the Scotts Valley Rockery so we wanted to save the good stuff for the top.

The next step was using some drain rock from the front parking area to fill the planters, and then add the small river cobbles. It worked out perfectly, we had just enough cobbles. We put down some pavers for the pots to sit on level, and then filled in to cover and hide the pavers.

Another space saving idea that I learned is to put packing pnuts inside larger pots to spare the dirt and reduce weight.

The icing on the cake is adding the beautiful flowers and gorilla fur.