With the size of the land, we were going to need a lot of plants. We also wanted to garden to start growing as soon as possible, both to provide shade and privacy.
We purchased most of our plants from Kham Thiang Garden Market, the most popular plants market in Chiang Mai.
We started off with perimeter shrubs and trees. Our first delivery was of bamboo and shrubs. This was progressively followed by deliveries for plants that lined both sides of the house, footpath plants, and plants for specially designed areas, such as the sala/gazebo.
For the larger trees we had the merchants deliver the trees to us; for the smaller shrubs and plants we packed our Ford hatchback to the brim.
Planting the perimeter trees
We had several hundred plants that needed to be planted along the inside and outside of the fences. The staff were happy to do this for some extra money after their workday finished at 5pm.
Building a retaining wall
The rear of the house needed a retaining wall, as the house was quite high but the soil dropped off to the rice farm at the back.
Vegetable garden
Behind the retaining wall we bilt some brick rectngles in order to grow a few different vegatbales. We also planted some banana trees for shade.
Japanese garden and fish pond
My husband wanted to create a Japanese garden. We sourced a shop that sold some Japanese garden items. We also saw an awesome fish pond, so we bought it and put it into our garden.
Building the BBQ area
Foundations and lawn
This area, located on the same side of the house as the kitchen and living room, is the outdoors eating area. It has a pizza oven and large fireplace.
We started off my building a raised concrete foundation, and a footpath from the house to the area. We then ordered some pre-made lawn, and got it planted around the area.
Building pizza oven and fireplace
Next up was building the cool stuff to go in this area. The first thing we built was the fireplace, located in the centre.
To the right of the fireplace was a simple shelf, for holding cooking utensils or whatever.
To the left was the pizza oven. I really love the curved dome design, it turned out really well.
Outdoor eating area roof
Having lots of experience by this stage of building, it was a no brainer to put up some columns, get some roof metal, and weld up a roof to cover the outdoor eating area.
Building the sala
Foundations
In Thailand, a gazebo is called a sala. We decided to build one in the middle of the garden t the right side of the house. As usual, first we needed to dig the holes for the footings, and lay the foundations.
Metal base and columns
Next part of making the gazebo was building the metal base for the bottom, and extending the concrete columns up so the roof could be built.
Gazebo roof
The next stage was getting the roof metal up, and installing the roof tiles. We placed some insulation under the tiles, before placing cladding on the bottom to give an angled ceiling.
