How to Hide an Eyesore in Your Yard or Garden

How to build a flower bed with an easy way to hide an eyesore in your garden or yard.

There are things you learn about building a house only after the stages of the build are completed. For example, who knew the best place for our well was going to be in the front yard?  Funny story, the guy who owned the well company went old school and actually used a divining rod to find the water, which is essentially a large stick with forks at the end that supposedly point to where the water is. I always thought that was an old wives tale but he’d been in the business for years and swore by it.

So this is where the well pump ended up and how we covered it to protect it. Not pretty, but effective.

 

 

 

We have been living with this eyesore for 11 years. There were bigger fish to fry with other projects and life in general so I made due by painting the barrel a few times.

Time for an update with a DIY flower bed.

Truth be told, we started this project last summer.  Not because this type of project takes that much time but life happens and I just never made it to the landscaping and sharing part.

Here it is the well pump with the barrel removed. It sticks out of the ground about 20 inches.

 

 

We planned on building the flower bed using the same rocks we used for the wall in front of our house. We started by drawing out the shape in an outline in the dirt.  I wanted the area big enough to allow space for some nice plants and the faux rock we planned to use to cover the well pump.

 

 

Once the shape and size were decided, we dug a trench in the line a few inches down and about 6 inches wide. Then we covered the trench with stone dust. If you don’t have a truck, you can have this delivered from a local hardware store.

 

 

 

 

We shoveled the stone dust into the trench and then tamped the stone down, or packed it, to create a solid base for the rocks to sit on.

 

 

Then we collected some of the rocks out of the pile we had left over from building the rock wall.

 

 

The next step in hiding the eyesore in our yard, was to put down a layer of landscape fabric to keep the weeds out.

 

 

 

Then we started layering the rocks.

 

 

 

We chose a faux rock that was 20 inches tall and tapered to down to one side because we wanted it to appear more flat and look like the real boulder we have in front of our house.  We had to build the wall high enough to raise the ground up to allow the faux rock to completely cover the well pump.

 

 

 

These faux rocks are super durable. This one is all-weather fiberglass composite with a UV-resistant finish. It’s light enough to pick up but heavy enough to stay put even in strong wind.   You would never know it was not real!

 

 

We simply placed it over the well cover added mulch around the edges of it to blend it in with the other pieces. An easy way to hide an eyesore in your landscaping!

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You could also use a smaller faux rock to hide outdoor water pipes for a sprinkler system or speaker system.

I love the way it turned out! It blends right in with the rest of the yard. We like the flower bed so much we  – let me pause here to say that we all know when I say “we”, I actually mean my husband, right? I know I’m not fooling anyone.  Ahhem, he built another wall next to the house and he added more stone to the side of the foundation. So much better and so much more complete.

And only 11 years later!

 

 

You can find some of our other outdoor and landscaping projects here. 

 

 

Do you have an eyesore or something that sticks out in your yard or garden? I hope this gave you some inspiration to tackle that project even if you do have something in your way. If you’re like us, you just might have some extra time on your hands lately. 🙂

 

Happy DIY’ing!

Col

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