​Just finished a project that had three moving parts at once.  We were turning an entryway into a mudroom along with installing a new front door.  We were renovating the entire yard and, lastly, rebuilding an existing deck. 
 
The Mudroom
The image below shows the area we were creating a mudroom.  It’s hard to tell from the picture that the front door is flanked with two side lights.  At some point, a past owner had built two closest at the entryway, basically eliminating the daylight from coming in. 

​During the design process, I had made a couple of quick studies of how it would look if we completely opened the space again, and investigated an open floor plan.

​The owners wanted a built-in for the mudroom.  The original design included cubbies and hangers on both sides of the space with a set acting as a bench.  A shoe rack was on one side. 

​The original design got scaled down a little bit.  We decided that the built-in would be only on one side of the mudroom.  You can see below what the cubbies and shoe rack looked like getting installed and how nice the final installation came out.  The new door was painted Spa Blue from Benjamin Moore and the built-in was painted to match the surrounding walls. 

The next image shows just how much usefulness the owners are getting out of the new mudroom - plenty of space for shoes, storage and coats.  Plus you get a ton of daylight into the house. 

​The Yard
The yard was completely transformed.  I’m only going to cover the side yard changes in this blog.  I’ll try to cover other areas in future blogs.  The side yard had kinda gone jungle with bamboo and other plants.  There was a walkway that was too narrow to push a lawnmower from the front to the back.  There was also a fence at the entrance and exit of the side yard.  The fence wasn’t in great shape and it cut off the flow of the yard. 

​We decided to clean the side yard out, dig up all of the bamboo, demo the fence and remove the walkway to create a better flow and add quality play area for the kids. 

​The image below show the AFTER of the side yard.  It’s a huge change, and it really adds a relaxing, peaceful place for hanging out and enjoying the day.  We added some stepping stones with a really cool modern paver to give the space a little twist of awesome. 

​The Deck
The existing deck had lots of issues.  When we were demoing it, we discovered a ton of things that were kinda scary.  It only had one footing in the ground.  The other vertical supports were only touching the ground without concrete footings.  The joists were not attached to the girder and several of the decking planks weren't attached to the joists.  Structurally speaking, it’s a good thing we were replacing it. 
 
Another issue with the existing deck was that it was sticking out into the driveway and made it difficult to get a car to the garage in the back.  We wanted to get the deck off the driveway to make it easier to access the garage and increase the resale value of the home if they ever decided to put the house on the market. 

​The deck was completed in 5 days excluding inspections and rain days which added up to about 5 additional days.  The positive is that we increased the number of footings from one to three.  The new footings are 48 inches deep (about 6 inches deeper than code requires), and makes the entire new deck solid.  We added solar-powered caps for the posts as well as a handrail for the stairs (you can see the handrail and caps in "Day 5". 

​I got so busy during the last couple of months I couldn’t post about Stuff in My Truck.  I’m trying to catch up a little now with a bunch of images of a yard I planted with natives in October 2015.
 
The first image is a load of grasses, shrubs and flowers destined for a cool project I did.  These plants represent some of the most incredible natives in the region.  I had everything from Bee Balm to Blonde Ambition, Spicebush and Hibiscus in my truck. The hibiscus had blooms about to pop, so I drove pretty slow to the yard to not damage them in transit. 

Once I got the plants to the yard, we installed them in a front and backyard (see below).

The front yard bed is packed full of natives including the ones a mentioned above as well as White Blazing Star and native grasses like Red October and PA Grass.

We also had two rain gardens in the backyard.  We had installed a new patio and beds around it. The following images are a bunch of different views of the beds.  

​We repurposed an existing fence to make a gate and fence that hugged the line of the new patio (see photo below).  We used sustainably forested wood for the horizontal and angled supports for the gate.  I love repurposing materials.  They always have a quality that new materials just can’t give a project.  The posts for the fence and gate are topped with a solar powered cap.

Want to help stop sea level rise and monster storm events? Use your yard to fight climate change.  It’s the one place you can focus on carbon emission input versus output. When you engage your property sustainably you can actually take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Of course, the way you maintain your yard impacts just how fit your lawn is in the battle against greenhouse gases. So first, figure out if your lawn is eliminating carbon or just adding to the problem.
 
For more than a century, we have been using the Earth’s atmosphere as a dumping site for carbon. Every action we take, from heating & cooling our homes to turning on the lights to driving cars to taking the train to the way we manage our yards are either continuing to dump carbon into the atmosphere or eliminating it.  If you have ever calculated your carbon footprint, you know that most suggestions about reducing your carbon footprint comes from doing things less like driving less, or having your lights on less.  Or, it’s about changing something like using efficient light bulbs or buying a hybrid car.  With your yard, the goal is to actually do more of the good stuff like have more flowers, better grass and healthier soil. 
 
By the Numbers
Your climate change champion status boils down to math.  It’s carbon out to carbon in.  Here’s the numbers: one acre of turfgrass (that is, the normal kind of grass everyone has in their yards) can remove about half a ton of carbon from the atmosphere every year.  That’s not bad.  It’s equal to around 53 gallons of gasoline.  If you replace your turfgrass with tall perennial grasses and wildflowers, you can remove nearly four times as much carbon from the atmosphere every year (on average, according to a study by State of Minnesota). 
 
Adding trees to your yard will also amp up your ability to drawdown your carbon footprint.  A few as 9 silver maples can sequester over 2 tons of carbon each year.  With long-living trees, the carbon captured is captured for decades, and potentially near a century. Pines, spruce, oak and dogwood are also good options for carbon storage.   
 
The Other Side of the Equation
There is a downside to this however.  For every ton of emissions you eliminate by growing trees, shrubs, wildflowers and perennials, you can completely neutralize it with how you maintain your yard. For example if you use gasoline powered lawnmowers to mow your grass, you are emitting about .08 tons of carbon per acre per year. If you irrigate your lawn, you are emitting about .01 lbs of CO2 of carbon per gallon of water.  Those emissions come from the pumps and other mechanical devices needed to get water from its natural source to your sprinkler. Many sprinklers use about 12 gallons per minute.  So if you run your irrigation system for 30 minutes, you are emitting about 3.6 lbs of carbon. This seems small, but it adds up fast.  You need about 27,154 gallons of water to irrigate one acre of turfgrass with inch of water.  That means 271 lbs of carbon is emitted for one watering.  If you do that every week from April to Oct, you will emit over 3 tons of carbon from just keeping your lawn wet.
 
Fertilizers Equal Carbon
The last place you can put carbon back into the atmosphere is with chemical treatments to your yard.  This is also were it gets kinda tricky.  Artificial fertilizers wreak havoc on the health of your soil.  As the quality of your soil degrades, so to does its ability to capture carbon.  Synthetic fertilizers can hamper CO2 storage in your soil by as much as 28%.
 
re:YARD Yourself
If you want to find out more about carbon and your yard, you should check out the re:yard standards developed by MAPSOMIL’s green team.  In the guide, you’ll find an entire suite of formulas that walk you through calculating your yard’s carbon footprint and more.  You might also consider registering with the re:YARD program and discover what level of sustainable your yard is.
 

If you haven’t already ordered and started planting bulbs in your yard, don’t let another day go by.  It is prime season for planting tulips, alliums, crocus, daffodils, iris and more.   
 
There’s a bunch of really awesome things about bulbs.  First, they are really easy to plant.  Most bulbs only need to be 4 to 6 inches in the ground.  A nice, sharp hand spade or trowel will work miracles for you.  Or if you really wanna get into the bulb spirit, you can get a hand bulb planter or a long handled bulb planter. A simple thrust into the ground is all it takes.

Open, Close, Repeat
I use a hand trowel with a ruler on the blade.  It shows me when I'm at the ideal depth. You don’t need to dig a hole like you do for most other plants.  You can literally thrust the trowel into the soil, open it by pushing the soil to the side and then drop the bulb in.  Make sure the bulb is pointing up once its in the hole. Then just close it back up, and you are done. 
 
The ease of planting bulbs means you can get 50 to 100 in the ground in no time.  And because you plant bulbs in the cooler part of the year, you might not even break a sweat. I like to think of my bulb planting time as a form of gardening yoga, and breath into the effort.
 
I’ve already planting about 70 alliums with another 50 parrot tulips, 50 ice cream tulips and about a 100 watercolor tulips to go.  So far, I think I’ve spent around a hour and half planting all of them. It's fast and great way to clear your head.
 
Natural Enemies
There are natural enemies for your bulbs, and it pays to address them as you go.  First, you have to defend against squirrels.  There’s a few ways to protect your bounty.  One of the easiest things to do is to understand the mind of a squirrel. 

The squirrel mind is full of curiosity and always looking for an easy meal.  If it sees the disturbed soil, it automatically believes some other creatures has hidden nuts or acorns below.  It’ll dig out your bulbs, realize it's no meal at all and toss the bulb to the side.  If you hide your newly planting bulbs under some leaves and other debris, you can skirt never peaking the hunger squirrel's interest in the first place. 
 
Another way to stop them from digging your bulbs up is with deer repellent such as red pepper flakes.  Sprinkle a little around the hole and an curious squirrel may discover the hard way to keep its paws off your tulips!  I don't love doing that though.  It is kinda mean to the squirrels, and I usually end up getting a taste of my own medicine by getting red flakes in my eyes.  I opt to spray a little Liquid Fence on the ground after I’m finished planting for the day. It's a safe and easy option plus zero burning eyes.
 
The other option is that you can plant bulbs that squirrels just don’t seem interested in at all.  Alliums, daffodils and hyacinths are three awesome options. 
 
Dear Deer
If you are planting tulips, and you live anywhere there are deer, you will need to make 100% sure they won’t want to eat the flowers once they bloom.  As soon as spring comes, I suggest using one of two different eco-friendly sprays to protect them.  Liquid Fence seems to work great in my neighborhood.  I live about a 100 yards from the South Mountain Reservation where there’s hundreds of deer.  They come out at night in hordes like zombies looking for anything to eat.  So far, Liquid Fence has worked like a charm.  Deer Off is said to work well too.  I don’t normally use it, but I hear good things about it. 

​Bulb-alicous
All the work you put into the bulbs this month is an investment for early spring beauty.  A vast sea of colors and bloom in your yard just as the winter recedes is a welcomed sight, especially with the horrible, harsh winters we’ve been having for the last few years. Happy bulbing!