Transform a Side Yard with Stock Tanks

Apr, 2014

by Andrea Nilsen Morse

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Side yards are often one of the most neglected areas of a landscape, becoming a no man’s land populated only by garbage cans, air conditioning units and the occasional meter reader. When the owners of this Cambridge, Mass. property decided they were tired of the unused strip next to their home they hired Andrea Nilsen of Nilsen Landscape Design to help them reinvigorate the wasted space.

Measuring just 5-feet wide by 48-feet long, and under shadows from the neighboring home most of the day, the space was quite a challenge. Overall the goal was to create an attractive walkway that would lead to the backyard. “The homeowner has a whimsical sense of humor and bought some troughs without any real idea of where or how to use them and asked me to incorporate them into the landscape, so I decided to use them as a barrier, between his side yard and his neighbor’s side yard,” recalls Nilsen. Here is how she did it: