I neglected to take a "before" photo, so I can't really show in detail why I built a mountain range, but I built my very own mountain range with our leftover flagstone!
The builders did not amend the soil in our neighborhood before building homes. The homes are built on clay. The front and back yards of each home (unless homeowners have amended) are clay. We have replaced about 18 inches of the clay in our front yard, and last year I terraced the steepest part of our backyard and coated it with dirt, landscape fabric, rocks and/or sand to prevent our basement from flooding. Mission so far accomplished!!! We have experienced no window well leaks since the dirt for the terraces was placed!
The back of the house had about a one-foot overhang, which my father-in-law said is often done to add square footage to (and thereby raise the price of) a home. That little overhang made a great hideout for snakes and skunks and other undesirable backyard pets. My neighbors helped me fill that overhang as best we could last fall with rocks. No critters can live in there anymore.
The porch on the front of the house has been slowly separating from the ground ever since we moved here. One evening, our neighbors informed us they saw something make a mad dash into that dark gap. They couldn't tell what it was, and it may have been just a bunny, but it put us on alert that we needed to act once again.
Many of our neighbors have dealt with this problem (the porch separating from the ground) by adding a wall of bricks, either curved or rectangular, around the front section of their porches, then filling the wall-to-porch opening with soil and flowers or xeriscaping. I thinned out my irises last year and shared them with neighbors who built such garden "boxes."
Some neighbors have piled rocks across their openings. A few are like us and haven't fixed the problem yet.
I had a bit of flagstone left over from my backyard project, which actually isn't done yet, but I can't do too much more on it until the rock shop opens on weekends again or until winter is mostly over. I decided the odd shapes of the remaining flagstone would make a great mountain range across our porch gap.
One day, we will have the driveway, steps and porch re-poured or stabilized because they need it. There are many home repairs awaiting our attention. They will happen as we can finish them. For now, I'm so tickled red rock with my newest artwork!
That is fantasy. What a creative solution!
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