March 2018
This certainly was not a DIY project, just too big of a job for us and not our forte to design on such a large scale.
BEFORE AFTER
We brought in several professional landscapers and finally decided on Executive Care Landscape. After working with the owner Arthur and his crew, we just loved the work they did. The first photo below is what this section of the yard looked like when we moved into the house in 2011. See all that brown area, that is playground bark and I’ll talk about that later and show you with pictures what we did with it.
This next photo is after we put in the retaining wall in 2014, and we planted the little tree in the circle in 2016.
These flagstone stepping stones were repurposed in the new landscape, which you will see later.
Here’s our lovely dead lawn that died about 3 years ago.
After last winter we got lots of weeds and patches of grass coming up, but it all had to go!!
That is soft playground bark we are shoveling to use it on both sides of the house, photos to follow. In some areas the bark was about 7” deep, so there was a LOT of it. The good thing it was super lightweight so we didn’t break our backs.
Part of the landscaping plan was to add a concrete path along the side of the house which just had decomposed granite and junk over there. We had nowhere to put the bark, which we would use after the concrete was poured. We had to leave room for the concrete guys to build the forms and lay the concrete. Therefore, we put down about 40 feet of plastic along the fence line to hold the bark for the next 2 months.
This is day 1 and the crew worked for 11 days total to complete the landscaping part (not concrete). The work days were not consecutive because we had many days of rain. Although the project started February 27th, they didn’t finish until one month later at the end of March!
This is the river rock bed being created to look like a natural river flow.
They used huge plastic sheets to cover the ground in an effort to protect the ground from getting saturated so they could continue to work when it finally stopped raining. Needless to say our yard was an ugly mess!!
They brought in 9,000 pounds of moss rock boulders!!
When they were placing the boulders along the river bed, they looked so huge to us, but now after 6 months of plant growth, the rocks look fine.
The guys man-handled these rocks and made it look fairly easy, but we know some of the rocks can weight about 1,200 pounds. The crew worked their butts off.
They brought in 3 yards of cobble for the river bed.
With the cobble laid and the plants arriving, the backyard started to come together.
The white material under the cobble is weed barrier. Weed barrier is not used in the rest of the new landscaping because pre-emergent is applied twice a year to help in the prevention of weeds. 
The black tubing is the drip system which runs throughout the entire yard.
In the Sacramento area, whether it’s residential or commercial areas, bark is used to retain moisture in the soil, suppress weeds, keep the soil cool, and make the garden bed look more attractive. We are not fans of bark due to the mess it can make. Therefore, we decided to use lava rock instead. It has the same benefits of bark, but it’s easier to blow off leaves and we really like the look of it.
This is when they started to haul in the lava rock. They stacked it all over the yard, then spread it out evenly. 
One of those rainy days… what a mess!!
The sod has arrived!!! We still wanted a small amount of lawn for a splash of color, so we down sized from our previous lawn to about 1/3 of what we had before.
Once the landscaping was complete, Hank & I laid down the stone mow strip around the lawn.
Remember these flagstone stepping stones I mentioned earlier? We used these to create two walkways that meander throughout the new landscape and lava rock. We did this ourselves and are very happy with the results.
Re-purposed stepping stones
