The first of the large garden projects has been sort of planned since we did the clearing in the backyard, but it has taken quite a while to get moving... other (sometimes unexpected) expenses kept coming in, and this retaining wall project got pushed back. We did initially get some quotes to have it done, but in the end, it was just better financially for us to do it ourselves... it would take longer, but we would learn things along the way and save quite a few thousand dollars... but instead of a week of building, it will likely take a few months.

It has been progressing in stages... with one excavation to make sure that the garden beds were level and ready to take the garden beds... and then a larger levelling for the kids play area (I hope we finish this before they leave the house...).

First things first, we needed to remove the temporary retaining wall of rocks that I had placed initially. Sigh... it was already hard work to move all these rocks into place a couple of years ago... I guess we will find a new place for those.

This is one of the corners that needs to be dug out a bit by hand... the wooden wall will be replaced with a new block wall that will extend further around the house...

... going around the corner and then down this section. Where the bin is will be the kiddie playground... we have a little playset ready to go, and we did the levelling already... so, it just eneds to be set up and then some sort of ground cover decided upon... at the moment, we are just getting the weeds and grass back down over and over again.

As you can see, the last couple of days, I've spent an hour here and there just digging away. Its hard work, but it feels good to have made a start on making it our place!

At the moment, I'm just making the straight line down... and later, I will need to trench down a little bit so that we can lay a concrete base with the first block layer.

... and these will be the blocks that will also need to be filled with drainage gravel. There will also be a layer of drainage gravel behind in addition to an agpipe for water drainage. I've got the pipe scheme mostly worked out, there is only one spot along that kids area wall that I'm not a hundred percent sure that it will work... we will need to flow the water "uphill" the small grade, but I think that will be possible if we are clever with the way we place the pipe in the gravel layer so that it will still be flowing down.

The other option is to just dump out the water further down hill... probably not the best option, and definitely the messiest.

We have the blocks all sitting around already... and the other day, we went shopping for the layer that will be for the play-area. In the end we settled for this 10mm white rounded gravel... its pretty pricy compared to the other options, but it will be less dirty looking. We are also planning to have it spread out in the lavender garden area and along the carport where we have the new bushy natives growing.

... but this will be pushing towards 2k AUD for that material.

Meanwhile, we will pick up one or the other of this much much cheaper drainage gravel to use behind the retaining walls for water management.

I'm a bit nervous, but we will place that order soon enough... and then we will need to start on ordering the agpipe and concrete... and perhaps some dust base as well. Then we kick off with the manual labour!

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