I can’t tell you how happy I was to fix our own HUGE mistake – 1/3 of the sports court is now gone in favor of a lot of greenery, flagstone, picnic tables, and trees. We hired Dennis’ 7 Dees to design and execute, and it went SO WELL. Started in February and done by late April (P.S. a great hack for speed is hiring them in the winter when they have more crews available, FYI). I couldn’t believe how fast and great they were, the yard transforming every single day. Brian and I were in awe. It turned out so beautiful and I feel extremely lucky and grateful. Weeks have gone by since we shot this, and it looks even more beautiful now, growing in so well. In case you are new here… we once had the world’s biggest run-down tennis court (see below) that stretched from the still-existing run-down tennis wall to the far edge of the split rail fence – MASSIVE. And after 4 years, it’s now the size that it should have always been.

When we bought the property, the entire width of the backyard was a broken asphalt tennis court. What a crazy transformation…

The thing is, when we first walked on the property, we loved it as-is. Truly. Sure, we knew we were going to transform it over time, but we had no idea what a beast it would end up being (a “where is the end of the string” panic for years). Once the construction around the house ruined most of the yard near the house, we enacted the landscaping phase one in 2021-2022, and it made such an incredible difference. But then we cut it short due to budget and renovation exhaustion. We knew we’d readdress it at some point (which apparently was this winter).

This is what it looked like summer of 2023 – so pretty and usable and honestly wonderful. But the sports court was still too big, so as we planned for the outdoor grill area, we decided to pull the band-aid off and hire someone to make all the changes we wanted to this area.

Let’s back up a bit, in 2020, we hired Cali from Studio Campo to design our backyard with a separate landscaping construction team to execute it. It was very wild-flowery, which we loved, and was a great year one impact (when we needed to shoot the Soake pool). During lockdown, she moved to Colorado with her new baby, and while she still takes jobs in Oregon for this phase, we wanted a design-build team to fully design and execute phase 2 (versus hiring a designer and hiring a separate contractor). We needed to streamline the work, with a design lead and one project manager who worked for the same company and knew each other (and had a shared vision). So we hired Dennis’ 7 Dees, which did such an incredible job (and fast), more on that below.

The “sports court” (we never resurfaced it, so it was really just concrete) looked fine in that shot because it was brand new, but most of the year it looked like a dirty parking lot. It took a full 2 years for me to convince Brian that it was too big. The kids did love it, sure, but I also knew that they would love it if it were slightly smaller. The kids will be just fine, lol.

We made sure we left it big enough to have a pickleball court with space around it to play and hang out. The winter view is farrrrrrrr less inspiring. We also learned the importance of evergreen plants, so we ended up having Dennis’ 7 Dees switch out a lot of the grasses and perennials for evergreen shrubs.

2025!!!

We are SO incredibly happy with how it looks and how speedy the entire process was. Eric (designer at Dennis’ 7 Dees) did such a fantastic job selecting evergreens that still felt farmlike (we have some perennials, but we asked for 70% evergreen). You can’t have fast, cheap, and good, but we sure did get fast and good, so I’ll take it.

While I really did like the idea of the perennial wildflowers along this fenceline, they looked so sad in the winter and out of control in the summer, so we kept the cherry trees and whatever that purple ground cover is, and Eric planted evergreens and some flowering perennials along this fence. Excited to see how it grows in.

The flagstone looks so natural and like it’s always been there. We didn’t need more lawn, nor did we want unusable greenery in between the pool and pickleball area, so we asked for landing pads for picnic tables when we have large groups here (which is frequent). The picnic tables are great because the organic shape of flagstone that we love can be wobbly with dining chair legs, so these are so easy to set it and forget it (and it’s the vibe we wanted, too).

It occurred to me the other day that what we’ve been calling our “mini farm” (3 acres) now has a “mini pool” (our Soake pool), a mini gym (literally 10×12), and now a “mini tennis court” (aka pickleball court). The fact that we didn’t opt to adopt mini donkeys or miniature goats is CRIMINAL. There is still time, Farmer Brian Henderson.

The pickleball court finally got properly surfaced right after we shot the kitchen, and my goodness, it’s awesome to have. At the last minute (before the court was resurfaced) we found a team to throw up and screw in those cedar boards on our totally falling down tennis wall fence, flanking our green tennis wall. It helped a lot (and we gave them one coat of a gray stain to take down the orange and gray them out a bit). Of course after after we did that, we resurfaced the floor, and then the green wall looked so old and we realized it’s clearly falling down. Maybe we’ll tackle next summer – it’s fine enough for this summer, and I’m done thinking about this for a while (I much prefer lamps and pillows – this is Brian’s domain).

We ended up needing to put in a French drain along the side of the pickleball court because the drainage was awful during a weekend of super harsh rain. You see, the concrete that was demo’d left really, really hard soil underneath that they prepped for planting, but the extreme rainwater couldn’t absorb into the dirt fast enough. To avoid ruining the court (which I don’t even know if that’s a thing) Dennis’ 7 Dees threw in a french drain along the court edge with river rocks on top (when I say “threw in” I mean everything costs thousands of dollars in landscape design but it sure happened quickly!).

Eric, the designer, selected most of the plants, and we tweaked very few of them. They sourced most from Monrovia because they are high quality and grown locally, and Monrovia was able to give us slightly bigger plants at a discount, which was lovely and appreciated. Everything is so much more grown in now. We opted not to plant between the flagstone (for budget purposes).

I have a few more posts I want to write about that will show how it’s growing in, what plants we used, what’s up with the clover field, and what the step-by-step process of this looked like for those who might want a similar huge revamp. I will say that while Dennis’ 7 Dees gave a discount for trade (photos, reels, etc.), I feel compelled to unnecessarily gush about them loudly because they were so awesome. They designed, executed, and we’ve hired them for maintenance. They were crazy fast, super experienced, and I felt generally so taken care of. And if you are in Lake Oswego, Vancouver, or Cedar Hills (not far from us), their retail nursery is awesome.

One More Quick Before (2020)

Not exactly the same angle (will get this summer) as Kaitlin has to stand on our roof (terrifying) and I’m not exactly going to micromanage her, but what a transformation!

Human for scale (the pool can be confusing, lol).

A big old thanks to Dennis’ 7 Dees for landscape design and construction, Monrovia for a lot of the plants, Big Trees Today for the larger trees (will show you more soon of those). Excited to dive in more this summer as things grow in more and talk about why we put in a clover field, why we don’t love mulch (never will), as well as lighting, drainage, the construction process, and plant selection. So the first reveal of phase 2 is done, folks. More to come (always) but loving it so very, very much. Feeling so grateful to live here, and when the family is out BBQing and playing pickleball with all our friends, it feels actually surreal that this is ours and I’m this much of an adult. Like real simulation type stuff :) Thanks for reading. xx

Oh, and Dennis’ 7 Dees is offering our readers 20% off retail purchases at our 5 garden center locations (valid in-store and online). Just use code: EMHENDERSON.

*Landscape Design – Dennis’ 7 Dees
**Plants by Monrovia
***Trees by Big Trees Today
****Photos by Kaitlin Green