Welcome to the Jungle Baby...

               

Here we have probably our greatest and most pain in the butt project to date. The living jungle table.

The table was built to support not only the weight of the soil, and plants, and quickcrete used to fortify the river, but the wind, rain, and snow we have in abundance here in Northwest Connecticut. Weighing in at a guestimated 540lbs, this is definitely a permanent fixture of the back porch here, but totally worth it.

The interior of the table was lined with spray on bed liner to protect against rot and water damage, drainage holes where drilled, and then we began work on constructing the shape of the river.

The main channel of river was cut out of 2" insulation foam, shaped to fit the outline we drew out on the table and then covered in layers with quickcrete for the lovely stone effect but also to make it as water tight as possible.

To create a flow of the river, we decided last minute to construct the waterfall on the far corner.

Digging around the garden at my house I found little some really awesome varieties of moss as well as pachysandra that looked like little palm trees. It grows like wild fire and had was great ground cover in the backyard.

And with a little loving and supervision, it's going to be quite the thick masterpiece!

Now that flat area you see at the bottom of the picture is going to be a U.S. Army/Vietnam style firebase with trenches, guard towers, hooches, things like that. The other side of the river is going to have an uphill battle for sure assaulting the base, but all is not lost as I have a few special projects I am working on to give them their own advantages in the assault...

There is also work being done to built a basilisk emplacement as well as different avenues to cross the river besides JUST the bridge.