Lakeside Landscaping in 2011
at the Lindberg Lake Wildwood Resort

Part 5 -- Fabric and Gravel Base for Turf

Work on Tuesday, May 25, 2011

I was expecting the crew to be at full pace at about their usual 9 a.m., but this morning they arrived shortly after 7 a.m. and were busy laying down fiber cloth and covering it with gravel when a awoke at almost 8. I peered out my window, saw them at work, and skipped my shower and breakfast to rush out onto the deck. I later figured out that it was going to rain that day so Tony and crew rushed to get as much of this done before the rain turned the nicely scraped existing soil into a quagmire that would cause a delay of several days.

By the time I got into position for photographs, all of the fiberglass cloth was in place on the left-side turf area and Alfredo was busy spreading gravel over it. Brandon was whizzing back and forth bringing down gravel from the driveway pile.

Brandon moves in with a bucketful of gravel...

...and dumps it slowly so as to...

...spread it...

...at near final thickness. Then Alfredo continues to spread it to about 3 inches thick.

Meanwhile, their helper scoops and tosses our old angular-gravel-tainted sand into the lake.

The fiberglass cloth is quite thin but very strong, with randomly oriented fibers which make it impossible to tear.

Scraping more tainted sand into piles for shoveling into the lake.

The fiberglass cloth has been trimmed to follow the edge of the walkway.

Brandon dumps more gravel. The 3/4-inch plywood protects both the tractor's rubber tracks and the walkway.

Overall progress and a better view of the separation between soil retaining wall and the box.

Planting-mix soil at its final raked thickness.

Spreading and compacting to a 3-inch-thick layer of gravel.

Alfredo trims the random-fiber cloth -- it cuts easily but doesn't tear.

Alfredo lets gravity unroll fiberglass cloth onto smoothed native soil.

Brandon grabs another bucketful of gravel...

...and spreads it onto the fiberglass cloth.

Alfredo unrolls cloth onto the lawn area near water's edge.

Tight fit against these rocks is done with large scraps of cloth. After covering it with gravel it will be trimmed to contour.

Alfredo and helper spread gravel. It was a heavily overcast day, and began to rain shortly after this picture.

Much later, after dinner, the sun was out and these ducks checked out the new layout.

A nice shot near dusk.

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