The Pond My Brother Built.....

I mentioned back in my July post about my sister Danielle's Garden that my other siblings are also gardeners and my brother David and his lovely wife Deb are hardscape builders extraordinaire.  They bought their beautiful property out in southwestern New Hampshire many years ago and have turned an older house that had seen better days into a beautiful and inviting country cottage with acres of hardscape and cottage gardens. It has major elevation changes that they have turned to their advantage.

Years ago they excavated the back of the house that had been filled with debris for years and discovered a driveway that circled the house. They turned the bottom of the driveway into a patio that can be accessed by the walk out sliders from the basement or the stairs from the covered porch all with breathtaking views of Mt. Monadnock.  The enclosed area you can see to the right of the crabapple tree is their very productive vegetable garden. They built all the fencing and trellises and it is as beautiful as it is functional.

Some views of the veggetable garden....

They even have a chicken coop in the veggie garden for her bantam chickens. Love it!

When you walk out the gate of the vegetable garden and look up the hill toward the house you can see the elevation change they've dealt with.  The rock wall you see in the center of this image is an old barn foundation. The old wall was falling down and David rebuilt and added to it over time to form a grass terrace. From that level there is another set of stone steps to get back up to the patio level.

To my mind though, the most remarkable feature they added was a boulder lined pond that is big enough to put a canoe in! The amount of labor involved in building something of this magnitude still boggles my mind. They used a backhoe for some of the larger boulders but a lot of this was done by hand. Incredible!

A closer view of some of the rock work in the steps. David and Deb, you rock! (so to speak)