Transformation Tuesday: All About The Moss Rock

This particular courtyard was overgrown with weeds and wild vegetation. The client had a few volunteer Junipers that were growing along the fence that they wanted to keep and everything else gone. They wanted some kind of wall along the fence to give their yard some height and a couple of flowerbeds on a lower level that they could plant at a later time.

The first step was to remove all the vegetation and level the area out. The crew trenched the area, tamped it, and placed the first level of mossrock nice and level as a base. Next, it was time to hand chisel and grind the mossrock to fit on top of the surrounding mossrock while keeping the wall level. As the wall got higher, we backfilled and tamped the area behind it.

Since the Junipers the client wanted to keep were already in the ground, we could only build the dirt up so much - if we built the dirt up higher than the existing dirt where the Junipers were, it could suffocate the Junipers and can cause stunted growth and even cause the trees to eventually die. The plan was to use the natural slope of the yard (as can be seen along the fence) to add step-downs to the moss rock wall (can be seen on the right side of the after photo). This not only helped to break up the wall and prevent creating a long straight, uncharacteristic wall but allowed us to not have to add a large amount of dirt around the large Juniper tree and cause suffocation issues.

The same steps of trenching, tamping, cutting, and leveling the moss rock were used to complete the flowerbeds. Final touches included raking and removing all the debris and this transformation was complete! The client loved their new wall and flowerbeds and looked forward to planting them in the near future!