Rewilding My Lot

The builder here used an abundance of stones to fill the lots in our development, so as I work in the garden, I have collected many that were in the way. I don’t want to waste them, so here’s where I’ve put them to work.

Border Wall.
Because of the quirky alignment of lots around us and the fact that we have one of the longest back yards, we actually have five neighboring lots that border ours. I want to prevent loss of soil and water from this lot, and also to provide a barrier for invading Bermudagrass coming in from neighboring yards. A stone wall does nothing to prevent water loss, and is a poor plant barrier, but it does work well to prevent soil erosion and that was my earliest concern here. So for now I have made a little stone wall around the entire back yard, at the fence line. In the foreground are native grasses; in the background is a building site. (The fence doesn’t go all the way to the ground, which is why you can see beyond it here.)

---

Markers.
When I first got here, I placed stones as markers where I was considering placement of trees, etc. I have also used them to define two different areas that are being developed with native grasses.

---

Drains.
Both of the rain barrels here have an overflow pipe and I have dug some shallow drains filled with stones to guide excess water into the garden. This happy plant is Frogfruit.

---

Special environment for the Desert Willow tree.
Desert Willows do not like wet soil at all. So after I dug the hole to plant this particular tree, I put several stones back into the hole for drainage and also built a stony mound to raise it up a few inches.

---

Rock pile for Red Yuccas.
To provide some visual variety in the garden, I made soil-filled hollows for three small Red Yucca plants, and then built the area up with stones. In the bottom right of this photo are some Hill Country fossils, gifted to me by a young friend.

---

Ballast.
I can’t develop the garden all at once, so sometimes an area has to be partly developed and then paused. For one flower bed, the Bermudagrass sod was removed in the spring but I knew that I wouldn’t be adding plants until fall, so for now the area has a cardboard covering held down with stones.

---

Preventing soil erosion from roof run-off.
There are no gutters here and when it rains hard, sheets of water fall from the roof all around the house. There are four places where the run-off is hardest. Two of those (behind the house) each have a rain barrel underneath them, one is one the driveway, and the fourth is near the front door. At this location, I’ve put a pile of stones to stop the soil being pounded away. The little green plants bottom left are Scarlet Sage seedlings from a nearby parent that was planted in spring this year.

---

Storage pile.
I don’t want to discard the extra stones that I have collected, so for now I have designated a place near one of the rain barrels to store them.