The English garden of my dreams...

 may only exist on the wallpaper in this house.  

  

But we're giving the bijou courtyard a damn good shot. 

Thanks to my clever friend Fiona I have a lovely planting plan to work from. 

After a good chat with Jose, the landscape guy, I changed a couple of things - Portuguese Laurel doesn't like our coastal air, so we're going to use a vine he likes for our hedging, for example. Jose was worried that the Amelanchier tree we were going to use might not grow in Zone 10,  so we're going for a Palo Verde which has the benefit of being native, albeit not half as pretty as an Amelanchier. But for the most part the plans are unchanged and the plant list is good to go.

Concrete is poured and tile has been laid. It took some magic (various extra drains and little hidden supporting beams) courtesy of Ramos Masonry to make the tiles line up and be on the same grade as the kitchen floor. Totally worth the extra effort, because when these sliders are open it's going to feel as seamless as possible and hopefully bigger as a result. Between that, and the lack of a next door neighbour - that borrowed landscape of the parklet beyond our wall - we might be able to pretend the yard is bigger than the 17'x23' it actually is. 

Here's the current reality:

Next steps - actual plants.