Help with pool reno / backyard landscaping

[ocpoolgirl]

Hi everyone!

I'm new to this forum. We purchased our home a little over a year ago. I'm in southern California and while it's almost Halloween, it's currently over 90 degrees outside. Brutal!

Anyway, I would love to get some advice/tips/pointers from you experts. Since moving in we've had a lot of drama with our house / pool / backyard. While we have fixed the major issues (repiping the house, fixing a skimmer leak, fixing a roof leak, replacing a bunch of landscaping drains), we now want to focus on the aesthetics of the backyard and the pool.

As you can see from the pics we have a large yard the backs up to a pretty steep slope. The slope is ours too. The pool is surrounded by grass on one side. Our pool equipment is currently exposed.

Here's what I need help with...

1. I want to remove all the grass shown in the photos. Whoever thought having grass surround the pool when they were designing the backyard was sorely mistaken. Grass clippings frequently enter the pool and it's just not fun fishing them out every week. Our filter has to be cleaned often because of this. What are some good options? Concrete? Trex? I'd like a more modernized backyard.

2. Any ideas to cover the pool equipment?

3. Any landscaping ideas for our slope? I hate that there is so much dirt directly behind our spa. I'd like to level it out and build a retaining wall and maybe have a narrow deck behind that area. Thoughts?

4. We will be removing the existing coping and stones and replacing it with more modern smooth white coping and most likely tile. Any tile recommendations?

5. As you can see from the photos, our backyard is kind of in shambles. We had to remove a bunch of trees due to extremely invasive roots that crushed all of our landscape drains. So looking for ideas on privacy trees for the fence lines.

Sorry for all the questions, and would appreciate any feedback or input you can provide! Thank you!

Hopefully it's okay to post an IMGUR link to my backyard photos...here it is:

Pool Photos

 

[Nikilyn]

There are many types of decking, from traditional cool deck to pavers and travertine. I’d just start searching here and in google and see what catches your eye. For your slope, can you cover it in gravel? Everything in AZ is covered in gravel, even freeway landscaping that is sloped like that. It would definitely help control dust.

 

[Dirk]

Gravel?! Yikes. Yah, Nikilyn's from AZ alright. No offense, but that should be all lush and green back there!

OK, so I don't have to talk you out of the grass, that's gotta go. We don't live in a world where grass is OK anymore. I think you might like a stamped, cantilevered concrete deck. That would be one piece, creating a nice surface that would replace grass, existing concrete patio and coping with one surface. It would overhang the pool like the coping does, but there would be no joint, no coping. I think you would would like travertine, but your pool is curvy and you've got all that stone work and I don't see travertine working. A stamped concrete, with the right pattern and color, could compliment all that stone better than tile would, I think.

Surround your pad with a u-shaped block wall, for maximum sound-proofing, then plaster or decorate it in stone, maybe to match the stone walls of the pool or the stucco of the house (or some of both). Same for that fireplace, which is very cool to have, but ugly as h. It looks like a store front from a movie set of the old west or something. That could be surfaced with the same stone as the pool and pad structure. Consider putting a cabana-type cover over that area, and give yourself some shade.

Then landscape that whole hill, ground covers and shrubs. Drough-tolerant plants that won't shed and blow into the pool. Small trees, maybe some citrus, lemon and limes for cocktails. Those are evergreen, so will look nice all year-round. Taller shrubs along that whole fence to obscure or even hide that, so you don't have to look at.

That's a few ideas.

Or...

If budget allows, hire a landscape architect. One that knows pools and your local area, which plants will thrive, with an eye for combining hard- and landscaping and a pool into a thing of beauty. A pro would have the toolset and knowledge to do that up right, and would be worth the money, rather than piecing things together on your own. Plus, if they've got the software they should, they can do renderings that would help you visualize it all. My pool and yard (which came with the house) was designed by a landscape architect, and he did some amazing work, things I wouldn't have come up with on my own, but now I absolutely love (luckily the previous owners and I have the same taste). My pool is surround by trees, shrubs and plants but my pool stays surprising clean (which is a big deal, maintenance-wise), and while some things go away for the winter, most of it is evergreen that I can enjoy year-round.

Congrats on the house and pool. You've got some huge potential there, and it's going to be amazing. And welcome to TFP, glad you found us...

 

[Nikilyn]

My first thought was shrubs or even a nice green ground cover but I skipped that idea because I thought that was a no no in Cali with the drought going on. We have all kinds of drought tolerant plants that I think are ugly so I wouldn’t recommend them . But if there are some pretty ones that work there then that’s my first choice too. I live in the land of rock and desert landscaping but we have grass . I like green. If I lived in Cali I would plant hydrangeas and day lilies like the ones in the landscaping around Disneyland. I love how they look even when they aren’t blooming. And I’d take almost any tree from Dis, except for the ones in Carsland because I have those at home . I would also take up the rock coping and replace it. I like the stamped concrete idea. You could also add artificial turf if you want grass but don’t want to mow it. Anyway, that’s the look I would go for if I was there and didn’t have to worry about fines for water (which I heard you had big could be wrong).

 

[Dirk]

My first thought was shrubs or even a nice green ground cover but I skipped that idea because I thought that was a no no in Cali with the drought going on.

And that's what they need a local architect for. Someone that knows the answers to questions like that. Whether I had an unlimited budget, or a barebones one, my first expense would be the architect. Even if that's all I could afford. I'd do the planting myself, if I had to. I'd hold off on some of the plants, buying them later as I could afford, whatever it took.

A proper plan would include the plant list, their locations, planting instructions, plus drainage and irrigation. And all the hardscaping and decking, structures, everything. The whole blueprint. Without all that, even if the plants I selected on my own were all great ones, their success would be compromised if I didn't do the soil amendment and irrigation correctly, etc. The worse the draught conditions, the more important the plan... And if I had a huge budget, and could afford a landscape company to do it all, I'd still want an architect on board. I wouldn't just hand the back yard over to a landscaper, who might have a nice fleet of trucks, but know little about what makes landscaping successful longterm, especially around a pool. I'd give the landscaper the architect's plan, and then watch him like a hawk to make sure all the instructions were carried out to the letter...

An amazing-looking, long-lasting, pool-friendly yard is a whole lot more than buying a bunch of plants you like and sticking them in the ground.