Look what's growing behind my garden...

After 10 years of living here in Van Nuys, the dreaded day has arrived. the car dealership that shares our back property line has decided to build a 3 story parking garage where there was once just a flat parking lot.

Over the years we have had the benefit of basically having no neighbors along that property line. Our trees could spill over the fence and no one complained. the wooden top, added onto the concrete block wall years ago could fall into disrepair without much worry.

We have seen plans for the structure, and in some ways envisioned it, as the same dealership built another structure 1 block over. From the plans they seem to be the same design. I have tried to visualize how much morning sun it will block, but until the steel actually goes up I don't think I will have a clear idea. I could get all geometric and figure out angles and such, but math was never really my strong suit. (SMILE)

They have included a 20 foot setback in their design and will be installing a green space between our back wall and the structure, so this should help to screen the building a little, although we already have a significant screen of trees along our back wall. Some neighbors, though, well be staring at a blank wall from their back porch once the structure is complete. Luckily, the rear wall (facing west) will have no openings so we won't feel like people are looking into the backyard. This particular effect immediately quashed potential homes when we were first looking to buy. I don't want to feel I have to dress up to take my kitchen scraps to the compost pile.

I have included a short video in this post as the first step in providing more audio and video material in A Gardener's Notebook. If you subscribe to the AGN RSS feed at the top of this page using iTunes, you will receive these file automatically. Expect to see some garden tours and, perhaps, some interviews with other gardeners and gardening professionals in the future.