I present to you nine tons of river rock. Which, after a marathon weekend of work and help from some dear friends, is now all laying around the exterior of our house. Finally. This project has only been on our to-do list since we bought our house nearly three years ago.
All in all, the project wasn't that awful. It certainly required quite a bit of physical labor, but after chatting with some neighbors who paid to get theirs professional done (or know someone who did), it sounds like we were able to save ourselves a significant chunk of change doing it ourselves. So, for anyone out there in the blogosphere who might be considering this project for his- or herself, I figured I'd give a little tutorial (like I did when we--Darrell--built a lower deck for our house last fall). Please treat this as one of many landscaping guides if you are considering a project of your own--we don't claim to be experts and we used quite a few websites along the way to help us determine our process. But I do have lots of fancy pictures to go with our steps, which is something I found other sites were lacking.
Step One: Determine the area to be landscaped
This may like a super obvious first step, but don't dismiss it. Being thorough with this step will save you trips to the store to get additional supplies (which we had to do) or trips to return leftover supplies (which we also had to do). We used stakes and twine to "draw" our landscaping plan around the whole perimeter of our house, which also helped give a concrete image of a vague mental idea (such as "I want a curvy thing here"). After getting the shape and curves of the twine just right, we used spray paint to mark a more permanent boundary so that we could remove the twine and measure it.
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| Ooh, fancy curves |
Since we were going to be landscaping over an area that was already planted with grass seed, we needed to kill the grass first to make the rest of the process go more smoothly. Not a difficult task once we had marked off the perimeter of the landscaping.
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| Probably don't need a picture of Darrell spraying grass killer, but whatever |
This probably is not something that needs to be listed as it own separate step, but I want to mention a few things to keep in mind as you are shopping, so I'm making it its own point. The biggest thing we learned about supplies was to err on the side of getting too much (especially if you are going to end up with nine tons of rock blocking your driveway so you can't get to the store). Darrell calculated the amount of landscaping fabric we were going to need based on how much square footage we were covering, but did not take into consideration the fact that any overlap would require a minimum of two additional inches of fabric (and in most places, we overlapped closer to five inches just to be safe). Likewise, when it came to pinning in the edging and pinning down the fabric, we opted to do a little more than the recommendation just to make sure nothing was budging, especially around turns and corners. Since Darrell initially stuck to the "five feet between pins" rule when he was buying pins for the edging, we ended up way short. And although the last thing we wanted to do was move extra rock after laying enough to cover the perimeter of our house, we're glad we bought a little too much instead of not enough because the rock will inevitably settle in places and expose the fabric tarp, which I definitely don't want. So now instead of having to buy a small amount more to fix gaps in two or three years, all we'll have to do is pull a handful or two out from the extra pile under our deck.
Step Three: Dig a trench for the edging
This step may vary depending on the type of edging you buy. We bought the simple black edging that has a depth of about five inches. To create the trench, we started by standing on the edge of a flat-bottom shovel to bury it about six inches in the ground.
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| Our garden spade purchase--it definitely looks a little worse for the wear now |
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| The initial cut for the trench--and yes, we only killed the grass on one side of that cut; the dry weather and heat is responsible for killing the majority of the grass in our yard |
Now, while we could have left the trench like this except for the places we needed to put a pin into, we opted to dig out the trench even further along the whole perimeter of the house. Since we weren't removing the sod underneath the landscaping, making a wider cut on the trench helped to establish the barrier between the landscaping and the lawn by giving the rock a place to settle instead of just rolling over the edging and onto the lawn. To make the trench wider, we dug the same shovel in toward the initial cut at approximately a forty-five degree angle, starting at what would be the landscaped side of the trench and removed the sod and dirt (most of the time we stuck this extra bit of dirt along the side of the house to help ensure that the landscaping would slope away from the house and not cause water issues).
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| The wider trench, with the to-be landscaped side on the right. This was quite the pain to cut (but we're definitely glad we did it) |
Again, this step may vary some based on the edging you buy; I'll be explaining what we did for our particular edging since that's really all I know.
With our wide trench, it was really easy to lay the edging into place. We made sure the trench was deep enough so that just the top rounded part was above the soil line. Then, with a hammer and edging pins, we began securing the edging at approximately three foot intervals (more frequently around curves).
Secure the edging into the lawn side of the trench (which should be the flat side anyway) and be sure to set the pin at a downward angle, making sure that it isn't too close to the top or bottom (otherwise it might not take much force for the edging to rip free of the pin).
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| Done with the edging |
Up to this point, most of the steps can be completed with just one person (although if just one person is digging the trench, expect that person to be very very sore). Laying the fabric, though, is definitely much easier with two people, especially in South Dakota where it is perpetually windy. I usually ended up holding down one end of the fabric while Darrell rolled it out to the desired length, cut it, then worked his way back toward me pinning at about two foot intervals. While one person could pin down or use a rock to secure one end while unrolling at the other, pulling the fabric taut around a pin or rock could cause a tear, which would create a spot for weeds to get through (and--knowing my luck--a big ol' thistle would find its way right to that hole).
In fitting with my desire to prevent any type of weed growth, we overlapped pieces of fabric more than the recommended two inches. We were also sure to leave plenty of excess along the edge with the trench, because as the rocks settled in they pulled the tarp down with them, and we wanted to make sure the soil wasn't going to be exposed. Of course, in many places we left a little bit too much excess and had fabric hanging out from underneath the rock after it was laid, but all Darrell had to do was give it a quick cut with a pocket knife to get rid of it.
Step Five: Spread the rock
This is a step where more is definitely merrier. Process-wise it isn't very challenging (just dump the rock on to of the landscaping fabric), but filling, pushing, and dumping wheelbarrows full of rock can get exhausting. There were four of us working; the three guys would rotate between the two wheelbarrows and shoveling while I spread out the rock. I discovered that a garden hoe worked really well to move the rock around (I used a rake for a little while but it just wasn't quite as efficient), although I accidentally ripped a few holes in the fabric because I wasn't being careful. A few things to keep in mind while laying and spreading the rock:
--Try to make sure the fabric doesn't fold over as you are emptying the wheelbarrow and expose soil (another reason to put some extra inches down on the overlap)
--Be careful not to run over the edging with the wheelbarrows (especially when full) because it can put kinks in the plastic or possibly tear it.
--To encourage draining, slope the rock away from the house
And that's it!
Of course, you'll probably want to include plants or other vegetation in your landscaping, but if you are a fool like us and plan to do this during one of the hottest months of the year, vegetation will have to wait.
Now if it would just rain and wash away some of the loose soil and dust from the rocks that would be great. Not to mention make our grass look not near so pathetic.
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