My brother, Doug, and his wife, Ruth, purchased their retirement house in Woodburn, Oregon a couple of years ago and had to decide whether to keep the contractor installed new lawn that came with the new house or to tear it out and put in a new garden.

They decided that they wanted a garden more than a lawn so they hired a grandson to take it out.

So the question was what to do with the sod? They piled it up and made 3 mounds out of it.

Unfortunately this was done during the rainy season.

The grandkids loved to play on the mounds:

They decided to have a deck and arbor built as well as a stone patio so they would have some outdoor entertaining areas:

They placed stone steppingstone paths through the garden connecting the deck with the patio:

I flew up to visit them in July, 2023 and helped them install an irrigation system for the garden. We used Spectrum heads on 1/2″ drip tubing and for the ground cover around the stepping stones we used in-line emitter tubing.

They had been collecting plants for 2 years and finally they could put them into the ground:

The vegetables were planted into large metal horse troughs. And yes, some of the sod pieces were even placed in the bottom of the troughs:

Now they can enjoy a mild summer evening eating a dinner from their garden.