Reinvent It: An Eclectic Texas Garden Grows From Creative Salvaging
By snapping up the teardown next door, this retired Texas business owner was able to expand her garden to the east side of her Fort Worth home. “East-side gardens are very desirable in Texas, due to the intense afternoon sun from the west; now her house blocks this sun,” explains landscape architect Bill Bibb of Archiverde Landscape Architecture. The owner’s charge was that the designers reuse as many materials from the teardown as possible in the landscape design, and put in year-round edibles.
The team got creative, using concrete salvaged from the old foundation and the driveway to create a retaining wall and the stepping pads in a new parking area. They turned the old garage into a screened-in porch, incorporated the old metal kitchen cabinets into this space for storage and food prep areas, and even turned porch handrails into a unique bench. They sourced all of the other garden elements locally, using as many found objects or salvage-shop pieces as possible.
The retaining wall is crafted of concrete taken from the teardown’s foundation and driveway. To get her grandchildren, who live close by, and their neighborhood friends involved, the owner invited the kids to insert mementos like seashells, pottery and small toys into the mortar joints. The reclaimed concrete on the wall cap is beautifully chiseled.
This fence is composed of reclaimed pieces scouted from Architectural Salvage in Dallas. “These were typically what was used to make front porch columns on houses in our area in the ’50s and ’60s,” Bibb says. “We left the colors as found and welded them into a simple iron fence.” The finishing touch: a line of colorful finials that are 1-inch glass marbles.
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The team got creative, using concrete salvaged from the old foundation and the driveway to create a retaining wall and the stepping pads in a new parking area. They turned the old garage into a screened-in porch, incorporated the old metal kitchen cabinets into this space for storage and food prep areas, and even turned porch handrails into a unique bench. They sourced all of the other garden elements locally, using as many found objects or salvage-shop pieces as possible.
The retaining wall is crafted of concrete taken from the teardown’s foundation and driveway. To get her grandchildren, who live close by, and their neighborhood friends involved, the owner invited the kids to insert mementos like seashells, pottery and small toys into the mortar joints. The reclaimed concrete on the wall cap is beautifully chiseled.
This fence is composed of reclaimed pieces scouted from Architectural Salvage in Dallas. “These were typically what was used to make front porch columns on houses in our area in the ’50s and ’60s,” Bibb says. “We left the colors as found and welded them into a simple iron fence.” The finishing touch: a line of colorful finials that are 1-inch glass marbles.
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