Here are a few before and after pictures of our backyard and the Certified Wildlife Habitat transformation it has experienced over the past two years. I had to check the dates on the before pictures to confirm it has only been two years since we started this backyard project. It is amazing what you can grow and create in just two years. Start planting today!
Our first step was planning and creating the pathways. There are many software programs out there that will help you design buildings, rooms, landscaping and gardens. After downloading and testing a few different programs I chose to use Garden Planner. The software is simple to use and allows you to drag and drop plants, trees, random yard and garden objects and allows you to create different types of surfaces. You can get pretty creative!
This is the after backyard diagram with our proposed changes created with Garden Planner software.
Unfortunately like with many projects I did not think to take any before pictures. I did find a couple that were taken after the 3 pallets of old Chicago recycled bricks were used to create the pathways.
Wildlife Habitat before the trees, plants and ponds. (Ozzy with his Christmas toys)
Certified Wildlife Habitat (our backyard) 2 years later!
Treehouse view of the backyard in 2013.
Treehouse view of our Certified Wildlife Habitat – 2015.
Two of our three fish ponds.
This has been an amazing two years full of hard work, learning, success and failures. It’s all worth it at the end of the day to be able to sit with a glass of wine and enjoy the birds, bees, butterflies, squirrels, dragonflies, snakes, lizards, raccoons, opossums, fish (click here to see the fish ponds) and all the other visitors I have failed to mention – including the human ones!
It all looks so vibrant well done. I envy your space such a large garden, my garden is much smaller and I rent an allotment to grow vegetables in.
Thank you!! We are very lucky to have such a large yard while living in the city.