The first thing I think of when I think ‘landscaping’ is ‘blank canvas’. Building a new house means that when all is done, you are generally left with a house, on a plot of dirt, leaving you with a ‘canvas’ to shape and develop in to something that meets your puposes.

For us, we need a space for the kids to play, a space to entertain, low maintenance, and fruit & vege patch.

I’ve been thinking about how I’m going to design the back yard, at this stage it starts with a garden shed. Somewhere to put all the gardening equipment, tools, care products, etc.

I took a trip over to the local bunnings on new years day, surprised to find them open, and picked up a “qik fix” shed for about $470 in “green”. It’s 2.3mtr square, and 1.9mtr high. When I brought it home I was surprised to find that the colour of the shed perfectly matches our estate fencing, score!

The first thing I did is level a space for the shed in the back corner of the block, behind the house, compact it with water, then cover it in some building plastic (moisture barrier). I laid down sixteen 610mm square concrete slabs and then sealed the slabs with some concrete sealer (also from bunnings and the same stuff I used recently to seal the garage floor).

It took the entire day to assemble the shed on my own, and stand it in position on the slabs. I found one of the slabs wasn’t completely level, so a little whack with a rubber mallet fixed that up pretty quickly.

I picked up some galvanised metal shelves to pop in the shed as well, and in the future hope to build a small 2mtr long workbench in there for tasks like potting, cutting, etc

I’ll have some more online soon with actual landscaping plans. In similar news, it looks like the front landscaping (rendered brick garden beds) will begin construction next week!

Here’s some photos!