We wanted an entry courtyard that made a welcoming and calming transition from the driveway to the front door while maintaining a bit of mystery.
Change the traffic through the front door rather than a treacherous short cut to the living room patio along a precipitous slope.
Correct a drainage problem along the living room wall facing the entry.
The original landscaping was a collection of plants seemingly planted or allowed to grow with no apparent plan. Soil had built up against the living room wall allowing roots to grow into the wall and water to leak into the living room.
To enclose the courtyard, I decided to use a 6 x 3 foot wide module fence using a combination of a masonry rock foundation, posts and framing of Trex and polycarbonate panels for the walls. The module is based on the traditional Japanese measurement of a ken, so the module is 1 ken high and 1/2 ken wide. The original size of the courtyard area was 36 ft width and 18 ft wide. But after making allowances for a walk way on the east side and a planting area on the north side the wall dimensions were reduced to a 11 by 5.8 modules. The module provides a human scaled pattern that contrasts with the plants and rock while pleasing the eye.
Materials
The polycarbonate panels were chosen for a number of reasons:
1. Allows light in a North East Corner
2. A screen for decorative shadows day and night
3. Very light and easy to work with.
4. Very strong. Windstorms occur every year with gusts exceeding 70 mph.
I had used these panels at trade shows for displays, but they are used extensively for Green houses, so are readily available. We used white panels. Here’s a supplier. https://www.sundancesupply.com/index2.html
The polycarbonate panels are only five feet high in the modules allowing views of the mountains while obscuring the houses in the valleys below. They also obscure some of the garden from the driveway. To increase air circulation in the courtyard the panels do not touch the ground.
I selected Trex for the framing to avoid rot and termites, a serious problem here. The posts are two Trex 2 x 4s combined. The posts were painted Benjamin Moore Black Iron.
We chose a round stone basin for a tsukubai, http://www.cherryblossomgardens.com/basin_setup.htm , near the entrance pavilion. The basin is fed by a copper spout protruding from an 5 inch oxidized steel I-beam. The water pours into the stone basin and drains over the side into a reservoir covered in dark Mexican beach stones and overflows into a streambed that flows adjacent to living room wall. There is a drain under the Mexican beach stones covering the floor of the streambed that removes excess water to the hillside below. The Mexican beach stones match a sunken garden in the house that is in front of a plate glass window overlooking the streambed. The sound of the fountain can be heard beyond the walls and once the silk tassel bush, garrya elliptica, has grown, the fountain will not be seen from the garden entrance.
The garden was planted with native plants with the exception of some creeping thyme. The focal plants are a California Buckeye, Aesculus californica, a Ceanothus selection and a Manzanita, Arctostaphylos and the silk tassel bush mentioned above. Other selections include Chain fern, Woodwardia fimbriata; Western Sword fern, Polystichum munitum; Heuchera, Penstemon, Fuchsia Flowered Gooseberry, Ribes speciosum; Douglas Iris, Dudleyas, Sedum and native grasses.
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