apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

How did you create it?:
I scraped off off the grass and dirt off the area that we were going to use, and pulled up the rotten wooden boards that were in front of the doorway. After building a wooden frame and pouring a concrete pad in front of the door, I laid a paver path from the existing path to the door ( I had leftover pavers from a path I had removed the year before). This was done using paver sand to level the area and a large level. I'm not a mason-it's not perfect by any means, but it's not bad. I also swept in more sand into the spaces between the pavers when I was finished. Then I planted zone appropriate plants, spread bark mulch and placed some river stones in the area.

I then dug a small "river bed" away from the house and filled it in with a bag of river rocks. I placed a rain chain at the place where the water used to come cascading down off the roof, a copper bucket with a hole in the bottom under the rain chain and then put that on a gutter deflector. The rain comes off the roof, into the bucket, then gets to the "river bed" at a much lower velocity and flows away from the house to the driveway and road.

Recommended store, site, product or resource?
I buy everything I need at lowes. I especially like looking for re packaged mulch in the garden center. They usually have a just a tiny hole in the bag and they sell it at 1/2 off!