[haha]

Quote:

Originally Posted by wabmester I subscribe to the retiree's creed: don't pay for anything that you can do yourself.* *But I'm sort of on the fence when it comes to landscaping, so I'm curious about how others have approached this issue. <snip> I'm pretty sure I can figure out how to use an auger to dig holes for fence posts, and maybe even plumb a fence, but the rest of the stuff eludes me. So, how did you guys approach a project like this?* *Farm the whole thing out?* Just farm out the landscape architecture part and try to come up to speed on the rest of stuff?* *Or did you just wing it and end up paying a hefty tuition on your naive screw-ups?

Those augers can be* bitch in many of our rocky, clay soils around here. I built wire stock fence, and a cedar vertical board fence. It was fun, and pretty easy, though I dug the holes with an old fashioned clamshell post-hole digger. 30 years later it is all still standing. My sons helped, and we all feel great about it.

I farmed the landscape planning out to my wife, who didn't know anything about it either, but at least this made her more likely to be satisfied with it. And that worked. Not Butchart Gardens, but that wasn't our plan anyway.

I planted some laurals from cuttings that I rooted following directions that a friend who was studying horticulture gave me. Today they are huge trees with enormous trunks.

This may not be the best way if one is thinking about resale, etc. But if money is a large concern, it always seemed better to me to keep working, and not have that pecuniary consideration creep into everything else.

Mikey