For months, the beer garden behind GoodLife Brewing Co.’s brewery and pub at 70 S.W. Century Drive in Bend has looked like a vacant lot, populated with dust, weeds and dead grass.

But starting Tuesday, the area will come to life as the brewery kicks off summer with the unveiling of a sparkling new area to play bocce ball, ladder ball and the beanbag-tossing game known as cornhole.

“We started the brewery in Bend because it really is a good life here,” said Steven Denio, the events and promotion director for the brewery. “We’re lucky enough to have this big grassy area, and these lawn games give people another reason to enjoy the good life while having some beer.”

The brewery recently renovated its beer garden and will open the area Tuesday. But, as is well-known GoodLife regulars, the garden is more than just patio tables and chairs. It has featured bocce ball and cornhole games since it opened in July 2011, and this season, the brewery’s taking the area to new levels of lawn gamedom.

“It used to be this grassy area where you could play, but it’s always been kind of unorganized,” Denio said. “Now everything will be up-to-spec of what you’d see at a pro grade court.”

The brewery recently landscaped the area, creating not only a new court, but permanent landing pads for cornhole bags. It has also added welded fixtures for ladder ball, a game in which players toss a ball-weighted rope onto a ladder rung from a distance. And bocce ball leagues will be organized this summer for those who take their lawn games seriously.

The brewery is also starting a hop garden along the lawn’s back gate. Though GoodLife doesn’t expect to have a full-scale hop garden anytime soon, if all goes well, it may use its homegrown hops in batches of specialty beer sometime in the future.

The gaming areas will be open Tuesdays and Thursdays to start the summer and will expand hours and days later in the season. The brewery already has a healthy event list in the coming months, with live music each Tuesday (including Truck Stop Gravy next week), a bocce ball tournament on June 19, and the brewery’s two-year anniversary party June 21-22.