By snapping up the teardown next door, this retired Texas company owner was able to expand her garden into the east side of her Fort Worth home. “East-side gardens are very desirable in Texas, as a result of intense afternoon sun from the west; now her home cubes this sun,” describes landscape architect Bill Bibb of Archiverde Landscape Architecture. The proprietor’s cost was that the designers reuse as many substances from the teardown as possible in the landscape layout, and put in year-round edibles.
The group got creative, with concrete flashed from the old foundation and the driveway to create a retaining wall and the landing pads in a brand new parking space. They turned into the old garage into a screened-in porch, incorporated the old metal kitchen cabinets to this area for storage and food prep areas, and also turned porch handrails to a unique bench. They sourced all the other garden components locally, together with as many found objects or salvage-shop bits as possible.
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The retaining wall consists of concrete taken out of the teardown’s foundation and driveway. To acquire her grandchildren, who live close by, and their neighborhood friends included, the owner encouraged the children to insert mementos like seashells, pottery and tiny toys to the mortar joints. The reclaimed concrete onto the wall cap is attractively sculpted.
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This weapon is composed of reclaimed pieces scouted from Architectural Salvage in Dallas. “All these were typically what was used to make front porch columns on houses in our area from the ’50s and ’60s,” Bibb says. “We left the colours as welded and found them into a very simple iron fencing.” The finishing touch: a line of colorful finials which are 1-inch glass marbles.
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A trip to renowned Dallas picture architect Robert Bellamy’s studio motivated this stained glass gate. “We tried to get Robert’s gate, but he wouldn’t sell it. Therefore we needed to come across a fantastic window and produce our own,” Bibb says. The team found this one in an architectural salvage store and then needed the fencing contractor transform it into a gorgeous gate.
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“Initially we thought it would be cheaper to utilize the large pieces of broken concrete to get a guest parking pad, but we immediately realized the labor factor to move and place such large bits was extraordinary,” Bibb admits. “Our two-space parking area shrunk to one very quickly. I still love the idea, and the broken concrete has a fantastic patina to it” He warns that unless you have wide-open spaces and heavy equipment, it isn’t so sensible to carry out this thought. “We chalked that one up to doing the ideal thing and keeping it from this ditch,” he says.
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They may have struck out at buying Bellamy’s gate, but they did score a sculpture out of India in his place, which they turned into a reservoir. They just placed it onto a grate above a buried galvanized metal horse trough, which hides the pump and the mild. Bibb put potted plants around the fountain to take advantage of the dab. The plantings are a diverse mixture of fruit trees, vegetables, perennials and hardy woody plants.
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Finally they topped the grate with enormous chunks of blue glass given by Bellamy.
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The former garage from the teardown now serves as a screened-in porch complete with its very own patio. The brick used on the porch steps and the steps from the road around the garden are made from reclaimed Chicago bricks.
“I have been advised that these bricks were salvaged after the fantastic fire in Chicago in the late 1800s — many are charred on one side, so I tend to trust the story,” Bibb says. The customer’s house also uses these same reclaimed Chicago bricks with stucco.
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When it broke, this solid limestone column became unworthy in another occupation, so in the soul of reuse, Bibb put it at the garden as a futon seat.
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“Our client has had bumper crops of every vegetable imaginable and is glad to discuss them with neighbors and friends,” Bibb says. Adirondack stick style motivated the eastern red cedar fence round the edible garden.
The vegetable beds are round galvanized steel horse troughs with the bottoms cut out to allow for great oxygen and water exchange between the imported soil (which comprises about 30% shale for drainage) and the indigenous soil below. Each bed is irrigated with a drip line which can can be adjusted or turned off as needed.
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Here’s a strategy of this east-side garden; the home is across the bottom, and also the garage-turned-porch is on the right.
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“The orange bench was a present from Archiverde into the client for letting us have such a wonderful time designing this garden,” Bibb says. “We made it out of two curved pieces of handrail from the old property.”
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