Here we go! We finally started to tackle the rock garden project! This is the house we bought... until recently we had to stripe off the paint with a sander from all the panels on the front side of the house, and it really wore us out. As you can see, the striping is not completely finished, but we finally decided we would hire somebody to do the final sanding, this requiring a more professional hand...
Now the first step is to consider all the past, present, and future problems that may arise with building a berm. We found out that the main problem with berms is that they allow water to drain both to the front and to the back of them. For this reason, we had to create a french draining system that would convey the water from the foundation of the house back to the street. Me (and my back) volunteered to take care of the problem...
This digging took about three days, and I still feel pain!!! ahah!
Then we considered making it an easy job by laying those gravel-less french draining pipes named "EZ-Flow" that we found at the Home Depot. Tomorrow we will level the pipes to make sure the water will drain off to the street, and then we will proceed with calling the first truck load of gravel, sand and boulders!!!! I used the soil that we dug out of the drains to make a base-layer for the berm (which would actually save me money on the amount of sand I will have to purchase later!)
More pictures to come very soon!