Mid-Atlantic Gardening: MY FIRST LANDSCAPE PROJECT (for pay), 0 by ViburnumValley

ViburnumValley wrote:
CAMfromMD wrote:

Quoting:Maybe. Any engineers among us?

To which I'd say: If there were, they would have cut down all the trees within 50 yards, graded that site down to bedrock, and brought it back up in 6" compacted lifts guaranteeing stability of final elevation for the next 150 years.

Now, if you were looking for quality design and installation specifications for a residential walkway, you'd be looking for a Landscape Architect. Just sayin'...

Seq:

"Wrong" is such a subjective and loaded term (as speedie notes). You've done it a certain way, and you are going to learn from your efforts. Since you asked, though...

I think the look of the finished walk is handsome in design, scale, and color. As far as construction, though, you might have gone a little light-handed.

Tamped clay is a firm base, most of the time. Since it seems it is quite shallow (in this instance) it will eventually get wet (expanding), then dry (contracting), then wet, then dry, then wet, then freeze - upon which it EXPANDS again - then thaws. Are you imagining what is going on above this clay layer?

The slope seems adequate to drain, provided there is a corridor for the excess moisture to follow. If you didn't provide subsurface corridors (pipes, coarse graded aggregate, etc.) it will flow downslope where it can. If it is moving in the sandy profile, it will move those particles with it (over time) and the sand will no longer be where it started out. Small rock shims are also an indication that it will be fine for some time, but those will eventually compress into whatever is below them when that softens, and lose efficacy in providing a level step.

All this will be exacerbated if anything heavier than a human traverses this path.

Here is the front walk at the Valley. These random stones are set into/on 12" of compacted coarse graded aggregate limestone known locally as 57s - the gravel that goes into concrete. I built this six years ago, and I can back my truck down to my front steps on it - and nothing moves.

Great houses are built on solid foundations.