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FranksATX - Building Landscape Beds with Native Rocks

1.4K views 11 replies 3 participants last post by  M32075  
#1 ·
Over the past four years, I have worked on transforming some of the difficult-to-maintain areas around my property into large landscape beds. The soil in NW Austin is decent but very shallow. When it rains, rocks seem to emerge from the ground due to the thin soil washing away. Some of these areas were unsightly, and I disliked edging around the obstacles. So, I used rocks from my numerous rock piles to build raised beds. This allowed me to buy soil and plant trees, bushes, and flowering plants, turning the once unattractive spots into beautiful spaces.

Turning lemons into lemonade, if you will.

I'm fortunate to live in an area with an abundance of native limestone. I have many large piles of rocks that were excavated when our home was built in the early 2000s, along with some chopped rock left over from the construction.

The first project was near the utility pole, where dirt, mostly rock, had piled up around the base and runoff from the neighbor's driveway had washed away the soil.

I bought a shed to store all my lawn gear and decided to use that area as my test site to bring the vision in my mind to life.

The first step involved mowing all the tall grass and using a string trimmer and paint to outline how it would look.


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#6 · (Edited)
This is the area as of today—still a work in progress. I have added drip irrigation, more soil, and more decomposed granite in the middle 'desert' area. I plan to start adding river rock and trees along the fence line further down this fall when the temperatures cool down.

In total I brought in 3 yards of top soil and 2 yards of decomposed granite.
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#7 · (Edited)
This was my first area to experiment in and learn how to use the rocks that I had available. The second area was going to be much more challenging. It is a highly visible spot next to our garage with a steep incline to overcome. I got excited when starting and forgot to get a true "before" pic.

After clearing some rocks from the area, I marked a curved line with spray paint until I was satisfied with it. Then I began digging up the soil to prepare a base of crushed rock for the stones.
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#8 ·
I tried to figure out how high I needed to go on the low end to work my way up so I would be about 6 inches from the top of the foundation. I used what I had around and got it in the ballpark to level.

In the first course, I used limestone boulders that were as big as I could move. Some of these are HEAVY to bear the weight of the soil I would be filling it up with. I buried them a few inches below grade and leveled them as best I could by adjusting the crushed limestone base material.

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