Irises: Striving for a MidWestern version of Doss' Eden, 1 by Equilibrium

Equilibrium wrote:
Hi Doss, you said this, "I can recommend fish and bird friendly water products that will keep your pond from mucking up. I'll get the name later." I would be very interested in any products you know of because I can't use biofilters in two of those preforms.

OK- I've got the visual on this and I am liking it very much- "Your hostas are beautiful but they need to be about 8-10 feet out. Then you build a little yard around your air conditioners, large enough so you can get in there to service them and so they have breathing room. You put a gate in the side, perpendicular to the house." I can easily relocate the hostas and move them further out. The viburnums probably need to stay but that doesn't mean a small hip wall can't be added at some point in time. Bummer I didn't know you last summer when I had major brick work done around here as I am relatively sure the brick layers will not want to come back for a small job but what you suggested is totally doable and I think I will go for it. I have a photo somewhere of some of the brickwork. I did knee walls around a patio and hip walls by entrance doors. We topped them with sills. No problem to carry this concept over to the north side of the house to gate in the ac units and actually, I prefer to see repetition. Problem is that the bricklayers won't be interested in a small job so this may have to wait. I wanted a greenhouse so bad and couldn't afford to start one when I had the other brick work done. The greenhouse I will get someday will have the same brick that was used for the patio and on the house. I am kicking myself in the rear right about now for not making the connection earlier that the ac units could have been penned in with a hip wall and a gate for access. Now I will have to wait to add that until when the bricklayers come back to start the bottom 1/3rd portion of the greenhouse which will be the same brick that was used for the house and hip and knee walls- I might have enough money to start that in 2008 but maybe not. Glass and ventilation for a greenhouse was a lot more expensive than what I had ever imagined. I thought a greenhouse was going to cost about 3-4k- wrong! It never ceases to amaze me how I underestimate the cost of everything.

I am somewhat attached to the bricklayers and will not use any others. In one of the knee walls they surprised me with this little outcropping and they created other "ledges" in the hip walls out front to which concrete plaques could be added. I am sure they could add little outcroppings to a hip wall around the ac units. Photo below. The photo was taken before they added sills so the upper edge is unfinished in the picture.