DIY : Levelling the block – My NT Garden – Medium

The last few days mother bear was still here, we had a little rest. We’d clearly done an incredible job (if I do say so myself) and the block was looking absolutely fantastic! I literally wouldn’t have a garden today in the time that I have it if it hadn’t been for the help mum gave me! Thank you once again!

But now as I looked across my land I saw another huge and daunting task ahead. Levelling it all.

I knew this step would be key to the process. Literally the beauty of the lawn and therefore 90% of the garden depended on this step. I stood there thinking, with shovel in hand, How? How do I do this?

It must have been a combination of pig-headedness from the success of the weeding and some minor sun stroke but I literally walked onto the block and just started trying to level it with my spade! My partner very quickly stopped me and told me I was crossing the line into insanity at this point.

This time I agreed. I really did need help for this bit.

As you saw in my previous post, the posts for the fence in the front were already in too, so getting a full sized bobcat in was going to be impossible without first ripping them out again. I wasn’t prepared to do that — as it would add time and work and piss the fence guys off. So, again I pulled out the old webisphere and yellow pages and started calling around.

This is when I found AJ’s Dingo Hire. Another absolutely fantastic guy, reasonably priced and very straight forward.

He came round a few days later to check out the size of the job, the time it would take and quote me and in no time he was ready to come round and start the work! Again, to save some money and time I opted to help out AJ whilst he was driving the dingo around. All I really did was shovel things in and out of his way. I’d pick up bits and bobs that were coming up from under the ground as a consequence of shoddy builder tactics and hiding shit they didn’t want to clear up and other crap that had blown onto the block during the last 8months or so.

In absolutely no time the block was completely flat.

​In fact, there were huge mounds of extra soil that seemed to be left over. I have no idea how this happened but I was glad. I then had to leave to run some errands and I left AJ with the instruction that all the extra soil should be piled up on the left side of my house where the most severe rain damage had been. He kindly made a pile in the front and at the back of the house. the dingo could not get into the left side of the house as it’s too close to the fence so this meant that all that extra soil (about 30 odd wheelbarrow loads) I had to lay out manually after that.

Finally, and I don’t remember specifically giving this instruction, but you remember that hideous verge I was planning to completely ignore forever, well, AJ had also levelled and completely ripped it up and cleared that strip of land too! Again, I’m hugely indebted to him for doing this as it turned out it WAS/IS my responsibility to look after that damn strip of grass in order to get my bond back!!

I came back and he’d finished up and left already and there were 3 huge mounds of dirt on my land:

• 2 at the front of the house

— 1st at the beginning of the left side strip of the house

— 2nd at one end of the verge

This one was just an absolute mess of grass, weeds, dirt, soil & all manner rubbish from crap people had thrown in the street (like plastic bottles, tissues and all sorts of shit)

• 1 at the back end of the house, at the end of the left side strip of the house

So, out came the wheelbarrow and my trusty shovel (which is just the cheapest square shovel from Bunnings you can get) and I spent the next few days slowly chipping away at the three mounds to recycle and repurpose as much of the dirt I possibly could. In the end I believe I only had one or two black bin liner bags of rubbish to dump at the tip, EVERYTHING else I shoved back into that strip along the left side of the house. I made sure when I was using the “crap pile” of dirt I buried it deep below the “good piles” of dirt as I REALLY didn’t want weed issues on this side of the house.

Oh, the other thing I did here was buy a couple of roles of that flexible garden edging stuff and roll it out along the edge of my fence so that my dirt wouldn’t end up next door. As you’ll see in the pic below, I didn’t even know, in order to put down this edging down properly you have to buy PEGS! I just cursed and stomped and pressed the soil up against it until it was “good enough” and did the job I wanted it to!

Learning. Slowly…

Overall, I had planned that this tiny strip along the left side of the house was going to be my “I completely do not care about this side, absolute NO maintenance,” side of the house and so I designed the landscaping on this strip with that in mind (as you’ll see later). Looking at the amount of space here too, I’m sure you can understand why I decided this.

Mid-May 2017 and that’s the ground levelled. Next step Irrigation.