Filling in Around the Tree in the West Lawn

The Stone Retaining Wall is part of the work to terrace the land around the big tree in the West Lawn.  The other part is along the fence.  If we raise the level of the lawn, we will need to keep the dirt off the (wooden) fence.  We have a base of concrete, with a stone topping along the fence.  We want to build that up, and level it, so that we can fill that area with dirt.

We begin putting down short courses of stone, to try to get it more level.

After about 5 courses of stone, we have it pretty level, almost all the way.

Still need a bit of work at the far end. 

But with it this well done, we can begin to fill it in.  We have a pile of dirt from the excavation of the Bottoms area.  We can use some of the bags of compost that we use for concrete framing -- some are falling apart.  And we bought a bag of peat moss, to try to encourage this area to hold water.

 To try to prevent the dirt from falling thru the cracks in the the retaining wall, we have stretched some weed barrier behind the wall before we start putting dirt against it.

A couple of days of just moving the dirt around and we have it partially filled in, beginning to take shape. 

As we continue to excavate dirt from the Bottoms, we can use it to fill and smooth this raised area behind the retaining wall, around the tree.