Rewilding My Lot

The ground as the builder left it here is horribly uneven. Last year I had several yards of topsoil delivered and did one round of leveling front and back, but I knew it wasn’t going to be enough. One reason was that the volume of substance needed to truly level this lot would be cost-prohibitive. Secondly, whereas the best long-term solution for leveling would be to use sand because it doesn’t decompose, I wanted to use a more nutritious option and I chose enriched topsoil (which has some compost in it).

At this point my priority is to make it safer to walk on the areas most traveled in the front yard, which are the strips alongside the house and the border outside the wildflower meadow in the front yard.

So one fall morning I leveled the “pathway” along two sides of the front meadow. Just this area alone took four 40-pound bags of topsoil. First I roughly distributed the soil using the back of a rake, and then I used a leveling rake to get the ground as flat as possible. This rake pushes soil into the hollows and makes a smooth surface. Then, over time, grass (or other things) will grow into the bare patches. In the photos below, the leveled portions are the darker areas.

A couple of days later I leveled a third side of the meadow with another two bags of soil (the sidewalk is the walkway for the fourth side).

The strips of grass beside the house need more leveling as well, but for that I’m going to need more soil than I would buy in bags, so that will have to be a project for another day (and when I have access to a truck).