Making a garden in a sea of bricks...

In an effort to make our paved, brick back yard a little more pleasing to the eye, we decided to put down some grass. We have already tried to make it a little more home like by adding some nice pot plants and herbs. Here are some pics of some of my herbs and flowers...

MY FLOWERS & HERBS

RIPPING UP BRICKS

How hard can it be to pull up a few bricks? We started pulling up bricks on Saturday evening when the blistering hot sun had disappeared and carried on till about 8pm. When it got too dark to work we called it a day. We were up and working by 6.15am the next day. It was supposed to rain and be a little cooler but when its 6.45am and you are already red in the face and dripping with sweat, you know its going to be a long, hot day.

We had to use an angle grinder to cut around the edges of the paving so that when we lifted the other bricks, they didn't crack the ones we wanted to keep. We then just used a crowbar and hammer to smash and lift the bricks. Some of them came out without a problem but others we just had to hit with a hammer until they broke and then we pulled the pieces out. We managed to save quite a few bricks but had to do two trips to the dump to dispose of the other rubble. We had about 7 or 8 big black dustbins full of rubble.

After all the bricks were finally up, we had to mix cement (which neither of us had done before). We wanted to put a cement 'lip' on the edges of where we had lifted bricks just to give the remaining bricks a bit of support so they didn't all collapse inward. It came out a bit watery but because it was so hot it dried very quickly. After we had put cement all around the area, I went around and just smoothed it out a little with my hands. I really should have worn gloves and probably used some kind of tool to smooth it but the grass we plant there will most likely cover it and it actually ended up looking ok.

The sand under the bricks is just beach sand for about a meter down so we bought 6 bags of compost and after we let the cement dry, we mixed it all in just to give the sand some nutrients before we put down grass. It looks like we may need a little more compost so that is the next job and then on Saturday we pick up some roll out grass and put that down. We found a nursery out in Chakas Rock that sells grass because we don't want to have to plant seeds and wait for them to grow, or not. We can't wait to see what it is going to look like with some nice green grass. Keep checking back next week for some pics of our new 'lawn' if all goes according to plan.