It began with our first 4 x 4 garden box. We moved into our house in Pasadena in November 2012 and in January scheduled an appointment with Master Gardener, Geri Miller, of Home Grown Edible Landscapes, to teach us about organic gardening practices. (http://www.groedibles.com/). We first met Geri at her class on making holiday cocktails from the herbs and fruit from a home's garden - that's so my kind of class!
We decided to update the backyard by removing broken concrete slabs and horrible grass. Pasadena has a program that gives homeowners $1 for every square foot of turf removed, in order to encourage less water usage. (http://cityofpasadena.net/waterandpower/turfremoval/). The funny caveat was that the grass had to be alive at the time of the inspection. So, I had to waste water by watering the grass to keep it alive long enough to be paid for killing it. We ended up getting $830 from the City so it was absolutely worth it! Anyway, here are some before pics of the yard.
After the turf and concrete were removed, weed cloth and mulch were added. A decomposed granite patio area was also installed along with a 5'x10' ground box - as if we didn't already have enough to do in the garden!