By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

Visually exposed to the street on all sides, houses on corner lots are notoriously hard to landscape. Fenced, thy look like stockades. Unfenced, they feel like fish bowls. That's why Ross and Jennifer Erickson decided to screen their Boise, ID, garden with a berm.

Here's how it looked before they started.

 

Here's how it looked in process.

And here's how it looked when it was finished last year (this year, it's even more filled in).

 

The process took place in stages. First Ross got free fill dirt from a construction job down the street, having it dumped where the berm was to be. Then he took chunks of concrete from his broken up patio and stacked them along the outside of the berm. After it was all in place, he built a showpiece of a river-rock wall around the berm to give it substance. And finally, he planted the top of the berm with grasses and low shrubs.

The job wasn't easy, but it was straightforward, effective — and neither fishbowl nor stockade. See more amazing makeovers