Dream Backyard Makeover Creates The Perfect Space For Entertaining

After spending some time in Emily and Will’s home, it’s clear this newly engaged couple don’t do things by halves. Emily begins to tell me how their vision for the space went from ‘garden tidy up’ to ‘complete backyard makeover’.

“We saw the impact of what we renovated inside, of it all coming together and thought — how good would it feel if we got it all done?” Emily says.

The previous property owners had lived there for 30 years, and Will says you could see how much time and effort they had put into it before it became overgrown.

“But we’re not green thumbs, so we wanted to strip it back and go minimalist with easy maintenance,” Will says.

When it comes to landscaping, Will jokes they’re pretty good at removing things — but that’s the extent of their skills.

It was time to find someone who was up for the challenge.

With seven trades chasing their job, Emily and Will carefully looked at profiles and reviews to try and find who they liked most.

“Ross stood out from the crowd — by a lot,” Will says, nodding his head slowly.

“He’s a nice guy, you know, he sees the planter box out the front and he’s already throwing some ideas out for what we could plant there,” Will says.

“We thought, firstly, this is a guy who can help us, you know, we don’t know what works, we’re first home buyers,” Will says.

“And secondly, he was so passionate, we knew we could trust him.”

Ross from Grasshopper Landscapes has been in the business of landscaping for a couple of decades now, here in New Zealand and over in the UK.

After voicing my curiosity for what kind of work he did overseas, Ross shared some stories, and one of them did not disappoint.

“I was once the groundskeeper for the Rothschild Estate,” Ross says, with a modest tone.

Fast forward to his time in Christchurch, he’s now got a team of seven great guys working with him.

The state of the backyard meant heavy lifting for the first part of the job, and Will says those first few weekends were good bonding times with the old man.

“Dad and I removed just under a tonne of ivy,” Will says, and I try to visualise exactly what a tonne of ivy looks like.

“I don’t see that very often, it was a shocker,” Ross explains.

“We had taken at least a tonne of green waste out, and we took the garden all the way back to bare bones,” Ross says.

“Then we had two skips of dig out materials: concrete, old lawn and god knows how much soil,” Ross laughs.

Emily, Will and Ross spent months planning and prepping the site, so when the visual progress all came together, Emily was excited.

“We put some stuff on social media, and everyone’s been loving that,” Emily says.

“We’re kind of the first out of our friend group to take on something like this, so they’ve all been invested in watching what we do, and kinda got a kick out of it as well,” Emily laughs.

The job moved fluidly through planning, stages and scope changes over those few months, but all up, it was a solid 14 day effort on the ground from Ross’ whole team.

With labour and materials, the job came in at around $15,000.

To give us an idea of the scope, Ross runs us through what they removed, and what they added.

Ross was happy to take on a multifaceted landscaping challenge and see his vision transpire.

“It was a really enjoyable job, and a pleasure working for them,” Ross says.

“Don’t get me wrong it was really tough on certain days, but all the guys said it was a great place to come and work,” Ross says.

Emily and Will knew they wanted a few citrus trees, but for everything else, they trusted Ross’ suggestions.

“Ross basically sent through a list of potential ideas and we sat one night and just Googled all of them,” Will laughs.

Ross’ recommendations:

Emily and Will loved the fact that Ross was a project manager for the entire job.

“He completely took the stress out of it; I can imagine it would have been stressful if we were trying to project manage it ourselves,” Emily says.

“There were different people coming in and doing different things, and Ross has that expertise across his team,” Will says.

“Builderscrack was great for us to find someone exactly like that,” Emily adds.

It’s the juicy question everyone wants the answer to: ‘what would you have done differently?’

After a long pause, Emily and Will both look at each other, shrugging their shoulders and shaking their heads.

“I can’t think of anything,” Emily says. Agreeing with the sentiment, Will adds:

“It’s the space we’ve really always wanted — it’s perfect for entertaining and that’s what we were looking for,” Emily says.

“It’s modern, simple, clean and manageable,” Will says.

The only thing left to do for Emily and Will is buy some outdoor furniture and put the finishing touches on their planter boxes.

“We’ll take a stab at doing a bit of a veggie garden, and maybe an edible garden with cranberries and strawberries,” Emily says.

“We’ve got lots of friends who haven’t come round yet who are dying to see what we’ve done,” Emily says.

“So once we get some outdoor furniture set up, we’d love to have people around — just bring on the warmer weather.”

A huge thank you to our homeowners Emily and Will, and Ross and his whole team of landscapers — we’ve loved following you on your home improvement journey!