Our New Sunken Patio Garden

Today I am sharing my new patio garden with you guys.  I have always loved the look of an all white flower garden and decided that this new patio garden was the perfect spot to create one.  We were able to create this perennial white garden for less than $150 by doing the gardening ourselves and mostly transplanting and dividing plants we already had.

Our New Sunken Patio Garden

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Here is a picture of what the garden looked like after taking our deck down and after our retaining wall is done.

Because our new brick patio doesn’t go back quite as far as the former deck did we had a blank slate in some spots and a few overgrown shrubs in others.  The first thing we had to figure out was what to transplant and what to keep.

The boxwoods were definitely staying but there were a few azaleas that we wanted to move and weeds we needed to pull.  Thankfully all but 1 survived transplanting and will hopefully fill in beautifully under our giant pine trees in another spot in our yard.

Because we need more shade for our new reclaimed brick patio we planted 2 more trees so we had a tree on all 3 sides of the patio.  We kept our Yoshino Cherry that we had planted soon after we moved in to shade our previous deck and also our patio fire pit.

We transplanted a Kousa dogwood to a spot next to our hot tub.  The tree was about 7 foot tall and has already started to shade our fire pit and hot tub at different times during the day.  I also moved the stepping stones that were hidden under the pachysandra around our octagon garden shed.

The last tree we planted in the center of the patio is a Franklinia tree, FRANKLINIA ALATAMAHA – PLANT — APPROX 14-20 INCH – DORMANT .

Because we live just outside of Philadelphia I thought it would be fun to have a tree in our yard named after Ben Franklin who was so important to the city of Philadelphia as well as our country.  These beautiful trees are pretty rare and tough to grow so I am crossing my fingers that it will be happy here :).  It will take a long time for this tree to grow before it starts giving us any real shade but I am willing to wait and give it a try.

We also bought 4 white rhododendrons like this one from Amazon, Cat Album White Rhododendron – Live Plant – Quart Pot  to give this patio garden more privacy and spring blooms.

I also transplanted and divided a lot of hostas, hydrangeas and ferns to fill in the blank spaces in this patio garden.

This gardening project took way longer than I ever imagined thanks to many underground roots from a former pear tree we took down last year.

Above is a pic of what this space looked liked before and what it looked liked a few weeks ago.

Even after cutting down this pear tree down it continued to send up water sprouts all over the garden next to our flagstone walkway and our diy post and rail fence.

I filled more than one trashcan full of roots before we were able to finish this walkway and patio garden.  After the roots were out we could add more hostas to this space.

It will take a few years for this patio garden to fill in and give us the privacy and shade we want but I can’t wait to watch it grow.

The garden has come a long way since we started this patio project.

Look at everything we have done so far…

Our Plan for this Sunken Patio

Demo Deck

Save Brick from Previous Patio

Dig an 8 foot by 8 foot space for our Hot Tub

Build a retaining wall around the sunken patio

Move the Hot Tub

Level the Ground inside the Patio

Use Reclaimed Brick and Create a Brick Patio

Use Reclaimed Flagstone/ Bluestone for walkway in front of Sliding Doors

Landscape around Sunken Patio

Build an Arbor for the Entrance to the Patio

Bring the Outdoor Furniture Back

Decorate

I hope you enjoyed a few sneak peaks of our finished patio and can’t wait to share this finished patio space and how we create our new diy arbor with you over the next week!

Don’t Forget to Pin our Sunken Patio Garden to your Pinterest Gardening Board!!!

You may also like these gardening ideas from Lehman lane…

Outdoor Summer Garden Hop

Gardening on a Budget – Free & Discounted Trees & Plants

Gardening on a Budget – Free Mulch