Landscaping for Casa Kanata

Since neither Sergio nor I know a lot about gardening we wanted the advice of an expert. Our architect recommended a colleague who is a professional landscaper.  Jeronimo clearly knows what he's talking about plus he has a house in Tepoz so he knows what grows, and what won't. We told him that we wanted mainly plants and flowers that were native to the area. So no maple trees! We also told him that everything had to be low maintenance as neither of us wants to spend our weekends spending hours working in a garden.

This is an overview of what he is suggesting / planning. We have to be careful about water consumption so a good bit of the lot with just be ground coverage with grassy areas kept to perhaps a third of the available space - and that still means there will be a mess of grass to cut.



Also, as the lot is slopped and we have to be concerned with water run-off, he's suggesting a series of terraces going up into the far corner. These will be built using volcanic stone as shown on the right side with the little guy giving you a sense for height. Unlike the security wall these lower terrace walls will not be held together with cement but will have dirt behind them so small native succulents can grow through the stone.

The pool level will be some sort of flat stone. We're going to look at options this weekend. Above that fine gravel still comfortable for walking on, and above that courser gravel in the areas that nobody is likely to venture.

There will be a mix of flowering trees and fruit trees around the perimeter such as limes, lemons, figs, avocados, kumquats, etc. These will be mixed in with flowering bushes like bougainvillea. There will also be flowering ivy on the perimeter stone wall. 

These images show the kinds of vegetation Jeronimo is suggesting. In the parking area he's putting a fruit tree so that the smell will waft up to the house terrace.

Don't worry that you can read the names - they are all in Latin anyway!

The good news is that most of these plants can be bought for pennies.  A decent size bougainvillea is only about five bucks.

Gardeners are dirt cheap as well (as is all labour).

The left image is of the parking area which will have climbing bougainvillea and flowering ivy (the fruit tree seems to be missing from this image tho').

The image on the right is a not so great idea of what you'd see from the house looking towards the pool (not in image) and then the stone walls and terraces and the cliffs beyond.

The top image shows an area to the right of the house for a garden.  We've asked Jeronimo to scale this back considerably as neither of us are interested in maintaining it.

And yes, we have a name for the place, Casa Kanata.  We'll have a plaque made with the address and have a mason carve an Inukshuk into it.  We may even find a pace to build a small one someplace in the garden.

The Pool

We wanted to get moving on the pool construction ASAP is it is a messy job and best done when other construction work is taking place.  This will not be a big pool.  Final measurements - 4 meters by 6 meters - all at one depth of 1.5 meters.  No diving, no lap lanes – this pool’s for cooling off.  Both of the shorter sides will have in-pool benches so people can sit and relax and enjoy views in two different directions.  It will be heated by solar panels on the roof of the house

Three workers dug the hole by hand with picks and shovels.  The excavated dirt was used to level the property around the building.  Here they are at the initial stages about three weeks ago.

As with everything on the property we had to be cognoscente of the anthropology restrictions as well as the lay of the land.  If you go back to earlier posts you’ll recall that the lot slopes.  Some of this has been corrected by the house and parking construction. 

This rather crude sketch shows that at one corner, the pool will be above ground by 45cm with a stone wall just like the bottom of the house.  The top of the wall will be quarry stone where people can sit and or walk on.  The opposing corner will be at grass level with a few steps up to this lounging area.  There will be another retaining wall behind that with ground cover plants extending to the exterior security wall.

This was ten days ago.  You can just make out the string that shows the final height.  The top right side of the pool will be at ground level

This was last weekend when the hole was finished and the workers had already put down a foundation of stones and were starting to build the steel supports for the pool walls. 

All very exciting.

Building Almost Completed

We anticipate that by the end of this week the structure will be finished with the second floor roof in place.  This shows the almost finished upper walls for the master bedroom.  The window on the corner looks in two directions.  The bigger opening will have doors that will allow us to step out to the terrace (really the roof of the lower kitchen terrace).

Seemingly it is easy to plaster the walls before adding the roof (makes sense – less mess to clean up as they slap on the plaster).  On Saturday they put the ceiling beams in place for the master bedroom as well as the concrete beams for the master bath and dressing room.

On the upper floor you can see the little balcony off the master bath.  The cinder blocks will be plastered.  There will be a glass wall extending left to right from the shower stall across the wall and to the bathtub.  Don’t worry, the neighbours won’t be able to see a thing – not that I care.

May 3^rd is Santa Cruz (cross) Day.  Santa Cruz is the patron saint of workers.  On ever construction site in Mexico, big and small, they put up a cross or crosses.  In the city these are sometimes gigantic crosses atop larger construction projects.  Traditionally the building owners provide a lunch for the workers on this day with some tacos, tortillas and beers.  We also did this but unfortunately were not able to join them for the celebration so no shots of them enjoying their meal.