My Front Garden @ Home........

During the Easter holiday, i designed my front garden in Kent. My sister and I, decided to bring my design ideas to reality. We did so by doing major D.I.Y to our garden with no professional experience.

The current situation is that the garden doesn't get a lot of sunlight and it has a clay foundation which doesn't allow the existing turf to grow properly. Due to this issue, the turf needed to be removed as shown below:

Before Photos:

My Brief: My family wanted the garden to be green with less maintenance required and a sculpture or outdoor garden decoration.

Now i decided to design the front garden, by making it evergreen using Artificial grass (that lives) which as is always evergreen and has low maintenance. Also in my design sketch, i proposed bright red wood barks, white stones and pebbles of different sizes for the garden's edges.

Photos of materials

Proposed Materials:

• 5 bags of Shape sand: This is used to level the clay based bed, so that the artificial grass can be evenly spread with no bumps.

• 4m x 4m Artificial Grass, 15 pins and 1 roll of liner (to prevent weeds from growing underneath the artificial grass).
  

• 5 bags of bright red wood bark: This is to be the edging for the garden and also to blend with the brick colour of the house too.

• 3 box hedge plants

• 3 bags of White stones and 4 bags of pebbles of different sizes : This is for the garden edges too and also to give it a distinctive quality.

• Garden sculptures and outdoor solar lights as finishing touches.

Step 1: Leveling of the clay based bed as shown above with shape sand and then laying down the liner and then laid the 4m x 4m artificial grass over the area and pinned it down as shown below:

Artificial grass being laid

Step 2: Filled in the first edge with the bright red wood barks. On the other edge, dug up holes to put the box hedge plants and then covered the surrounding up with the pebbles and stones as shown below:

Wood barks, stones and pebbles are been put in place

Step 3: Adding the garden sculptures and decoration, explored different formation with it so that it compliments the overall design and not just an element been added last minute shown below:

Garden sculptures & decorations formation

Final Design of my Front Garden

Wow! i didn't know i could do this, thanks to my sister for making this possible. I'm happy to say that my family loves it and it has also met their requirements as well. I have gained and learnt valuable skills that i won't have gotten from my degree but it has made me to explore what i have been thought on a Small scale.
I believe its good to put what we design on paper to reality by getting our hand dirty, if one doesn't get to do this, you won't have an understand of how things are laid or made. Now, I'm proud to say that I totally understand how to lay artificial grass and plants into the ground.

3d Sidewalk Art by Julian Beever

source: http://o.pticalillusions.com/sidewalk-art/

This is a collection of 3d Sidewalk Art created by an English chalk artist Julian Beever. This type of art is similar to the 3d Pavement Art. This Illusions are done by using Chalk as a main tool to create it. I like it because it beautifies the street-scape and also, it gives an interesting and awesome illusion, therefore allowing people walking on the sidewalk to interact with the Chalk art, when viewed at the correct angle. It also looks real and believable too.

More sample of Julian Beever's 3d Sidewalk Art Illusion:

Removed Paving

source: http://o.pticalillusions.com/sidewalk-art/

Transformers exiting the subway in NYC

source: http://o.pticalillusions.com/sidewalk-art/

A man diving into source: http://o.pticalillusions.com/sidewalk-art/

Swimming pool

source: http://o.pticalillusions.com/sidewalk-art/

Demons coming out of the ground

source: http://o.pticalillusions.com/sidewalk-art/

Spider man to the rescue below & above this London St.

source: http://o.pticalillusions.com/sidewalk-art/

White Water Rafting

source: http://o.pticalillusions.com/sidewalk-art/

Eiffel Tower being dug up

source: http://o.pticalillusions.com/sidewalk-art/

Expression of Freedom

source: http://o.pticalillusions.com/sidewalk-art/

More on information on 3d Sidewalk Art by Julian Beever, see http://users.skynet.be/J.Beever/pave.htm

Styrofoam - Japan Dome Houses

source: www.impactlab.com/2008/08/10/japans-styrofoam-dome-homes

While i was researching for a material has a light, soft and strong quality for my "PlayNow" project, i discovered a Styrofoam (expanded polystyrene) as a potential material which seems odd but interesting. Styrofoam is most commonly associated with disposable coffee cups, meat trays and packaging. But today, it has been as a potential building material.

source: www.impactlab.com/2008/08/10/japans-styrofoam-dome-homes

Japan Dome House Co.Ltd are the manufacturers that have made Dome Houses which has an igloo-shaped structure built from snap-together wall sections made of 100% expanded polystyrene foam in Japan known as "habitat for the 21st century"


The choice of this material for building a home seems odd to me but it has a number of advantages of using Styrofoam compared to the traditional building materials.

source: www.i-domehouse.com/case.html

Benefits of Styrofoam over traditional materials such as wood and metal are:

• Protection: It provides a good shock absorbency and compression resistance for safety protections.

• Durability: It is non-toxic material and it’s also moisture resistant which means there is no loss of strength in damp conditions.

• Versatile: It is exible and can be moulded into any shape or form to meet a product’s protection.

• Environmentally friendly

• Styrofoam Dome House does not rust, rot or attract termites.

• It is also highly resistant to earthquakes and typhoons.
  

More on Styrofoam as a building material: www.i-domehouse.com/index.html

Beautiful Arieal Photography by Klaus Leidorf

Klaus Leidorf is a German aerial archaeologist. This means that he conducts archaeological surveys from the window of his Cessna 172 offering a bird's eye view.

His overhead photos of a site are invaluable and beautiful for putting it in a wider context and discerning details invisible from ground level, But the details and context helps to identify a strong visual character of a landscape. Not just showing it's archaeology but also a relationship with humans and objects as a major feature for example humans can be intrepeted as multicolored bathers lined up on a beach like jellybeans as shown below:

Here are samples of Leidorf's Photographs:

Strange Nest

Cemetery In Velden

A Beer Garden

Winter on "Earth Sign"

Growing Fields

Glaciers Eye

Allotment Garden

All photos are taken from: www.leidorf.blogspot.com/2007_05_01_archive.html