This yard was dramatically impacted by their dog, Petey. He made it so the lawn disappeared because of digging. The owners hired us to make it a lowmaintenance dogproof yard.
Join us on this video and we'll show you some ideas of how you can dogproof your own yard. I'm John Valentino, president of John Bob's Corporation. This is Chip Valentino, who's vice president in charge of pet landscaping.
He has a GoPro camera today. Stay tuned so you can see a dog's perspective. While I'm not usually a proponent of artificial turf, there are some cases where it makes sense and it's a good choice.
This is one of them. With a regular lawn, you can get pet stains in the summer. Very, very common.
People think they have fungus, but it's pet urine stains. For dog urine, you rinse it off as frequently as you want. And then there is a method to actually once a year or so give it a better cleaning.
You can keep it very clean without a lot of effort. Also, Pey, the dog that lives here, love to dig in the lawn pretty much destroying it constantly. So, the benefits of artificial turf in this case really add up.
Nice shock of green. Stays clean and neat. Dog loves it.
Dog can't dig in it. Doesn't need mowing. Doesn't need watering.
doesn't need fertilizing. That gets a lot of use. I like that if you're using something not just for looks, and in this case, the dog is using this lawn every day.
One of the biggest downsides of artificial turf, especially in a city like Fresno that's over 100° many days in the summer, is the heat. It's it's a hot surface. Some people choose to put in sprinklers.
On a hot summer day, you can turn on the sprinklers, cool it off. In this case, we have these big shade trees, pacarpus, sycamore. So, it's a cooler yard and it's a shaded yard.
And in the absence of sun beating down on it, the heat problem isn't as big a factor. So, if you have a dog and you want a lawn, an artificial turf is a simpler, easier thing to consider that might work good for you. Does your dog walk into your house with muddy paws or covered in dirt?
We have a couple of tricks to solve that frustrating reality. One of the important things we did is instead of using mulch or leaving it dirt all around the plants, we used a 3/4 in rock that makes it so he doesn't seem to want to dig in the rocks. And Petey has a reputation for digging.
Chip, the angel that he is, doesn't do much digging. One thing that's important there is to make those rocks big enough. There's a lot of uh gravel or rock being used in landscapes that's 38 and they still tend to dig in that.
But if you can make it 3/4 and bigger, that seems to not prohibit them but discourage them from digging in it. There's lots of different rocks available. This is an attractive one called Rainbow.
And we used it everywhere we could use it. And we didn't put it real thick because if you don't put it real thick, I think it's good for soil, good for the plants under the rock. We used our products to improve that soil and put life in the soil.
And then down the road as we want to make improvements to the soil, we can just throw it on top of the rock and it'll go right through the rock. The other thing is I don't like using weed fabric under the rock if we have plants. If it's in a area where you're just going to use as a walk, then that's fine.
We did use a little mulch here at the request of the owners. Probably mostly aesthetic in this case because they like the contrast of the mulch and the rock. If you're considering rock as a mulch, don't worry about that as a decision.
That will work fine. Any plant can have rock around it. If your dog likes to destroy your plants or sit on them or roll around on them, you want to consider that when you make your plant choices.
They like color, so almost all the plants bloom and they're tough. They're easy to grow. Pete could sit on them and they'd spring right back.
They had a beautiful buganilia that really performs well for them. So, we added two more. They have a mature plumbago kind of spilling over their fence from their neighbors and they really like it.
So they added a couple of plumbago. We moved to hibiscus which are doing incredibly well, better than I would have expected. We used a lot of our penetrate liquid biotiller on them and our blend and those are products that really help with transplanting.
And then some small plants like silvery sunproof larvia which is just a very low plant that blooms with an attractive flower in the middle. They wanted something that doesn't get real big cuz their yard already has big trees. And so we used a small crepe myrtle.
Only gets about 10 ft tall. It has red leaves which is unusual for crepe myrtle. It's called the black diamond series of crepe myrtles.
And they're going to grow it as a multi- trunk very small tree. It's a beautiful plant. I really think that was a nice selection here in the kind of a focal point of the yard.
Pey will be able to sit under it and get a little bit of shade. The dog's prone to chewing on or breaking irrigation things that are above grade sprinklers and valves and such. You can't see them here.
This one is a drip system and it's completely buried. PD doesn't have access to it. They're just under the rock and so you can find the emitters if you want to.
That is a way you can get away from dogs that tend to be destructive with irrigation systems is use a buried system and drip lends itself very well to that. The whole entrance to their house was few shallow steps that weren't easy to navigate for people. You can see we have very nice steps now.
A landing. Pete flies up those and then a big patio area, a courtyard area that they'll have some furniture on that we did in a flag stone that matches the color of the concrete and the trim of their house. And the owners dressed up this new entry with these individual tiles in the risers of the steps, which is really neat approach to making it a little more attractive.
Using a new landing isn't necessarily a part of dogproofing your yard, but we wanted to dogproof the yard and make it attractive and easy to care for and useful for humans at the same time. That's the idea of gardens and landscapes is to enjoy them and have them improve your life. If you enjoyed Chip's camera work, let us know in the comments and give this video a like.
If you would like to see more content with Chip, then be sure to subscribe to our channel. Everything does better in your yard when you're a subscriber. If you'd like to see more of a dog's perspective, check out this prior video we did with Chip as the cameraman and Chip's perspective.
