The house faces south into our meadow.
Inside the cottage garden, we have a stream. Our little garden paths cross a bridge from the front porch, then go to the bench in the corner.
From the bench in the corner, we cross the wooden bridge to go to the gable gate.
The gable gate opens to the east dining patio beside the waterfall. The stream flows both inside and outside the cottage fence.
The three large hollies are concealing the stream from the southeast angle.
This is part of the stream outside the fence. The waterfall is up to the right in the group of large cryptomeria.
This is the path through the bird and butterfly garden. This is to the east of the stream. The birds eat here and then go to the stream to drink and bathe (weather permitting!).
This is on the southwest side of our house. We built the dry stream bed to handle the runoff from the meadow up the slope to the south. The gutter downspouts that are inside our cottage garden are underground to feed the dry stream. I have planted moisture loving plants in the dry stream, but they also are able to withstand our dry summers with minimal water.
I love the structure of the ornamental grasses in the snow.
This is a view from our house out across the meadow. The board fenced area is supported by our neighborhood as the site of an old sawmill. This property was a dairy farm for 200 years.
Happy Snow!
Cameron