Working a vertical driveway

Not only did we inherit the driveway from hell, it's done nothing but fall apart since we've been here.  Being as parts of it seem almost vertical, we can't just fill in the holes it has developed; but as I want to redesign its shape, we've never done anything very permanent to it.  As the hillside had eroded down right near its edge, part of my project was building it out a whole lot.  So now it was time to try to make some kind of a finished edge between the driveway and hillside.

The first thing I did once I had most of the added dirt all spread out was to draw a line from where I wanted to start enlarging the driveway to where I had already attempted to build out the parking area at the top of it.  After years of dreaming of doing something like this, just this simple line was rather exciting.

All marked out

Then I realized that as this was the side of the driveway so broken up, the surface had eroded quite a bit from the concrete part.  So we added a whole bunch more dirt to raise the surface of the hillside to match the actual driveway, and I redrew the line, this time in such a way as I could see the line as I worked it, using rebar picks.

Building a border

To get started, I dug a trench on the driveway side to make a drainage ditch for all the rain that runs down the driveway, as I didn't think I wanted it running over the edge to erode all this work!  Then I started adding local big rocks to create a border, stacking them on little rocks to create more drainage.  This was really tedious, but it should give us a reference later whenever we can actually fix this stupid driveway and reconcrete it.

Widening the hill

Creating a vertical drainage ditch

As I got sections of the border installed, I started filling in the ditch with some of the million rocks I'd collected (you can see some of the pile down on the flat).  Raking rocks is just so much fun!  All this work, and I was still just going to end up with something totally rustic.  Oh, well, hopefully it was going to be better than it has been.

Tedious, tedious, tedious

I used the driveway to sort out the rocks from pieces of rubble that had been in the hillside, dirt that hadn't filtered out, and weeds that didn't just fall by the wayside so that I could at least start out with the ditch being fairly clean.  I got tired and lazy when dealing with the last bits of each bucketful!

Looking down the hill

Looking up the hill

Persistence pays off, and I finally got it bordered and filled.  Whew!  It doesn't look like much, does it?  I put some barrier rocks where I stopped, as continuing will involve a whole different project.

While we don't need to be driving on that area at the bottom, I'm hoping it will be drivable at the top when I get the project continued.

Creating a cobblestone border

So, will this hold and be drivable?

Then I got worried that rain and gravity would jump the rocks out of the ditch.  Being as how the solid edge of the driveway was really just a bunch of packed dirt, I decided to slightly dig it up and use some of my bigger rocks and make a cobblestone border, starting and ending where there was still some actual solid driveway.  I used some metal boards to hold the little rocks in place.  That seems to have worked fairly well, and I think my cobblestones actually look kind of cute.

Preparing to create the last terrace

To finish the whole project, I needed to build out a last terrace on the hill side of my border.  I can't hard pack dry dirt, which just wants to slide everywhere, so I have to wet it first.  Then I have to let it soak in a little, just like with flour or cement. 

And now, here's the finished driveway.  For now.  I'll be planting a lavender border on this part, with two different kinds of lavenders that I've cloned myself.  I've decided to wait until early spring to plant most of this, as it took so long to finish.

Done!  Looking downwards.

Looking upwards, imagining friends for the rosemary

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This was supposed to be the end of this particular story.  I had been rushing against time, because we were scheduled to get some really stormy weather, and I'd wanted to finish first.  I wasn't exactly prepared for what we got, despite the warnings.  There's just no way even civilized hillsides totally survive a deluge of over six inches in a 24-hour period.  One that involves a lot of dirt is particularly susceptible.  We can't see most of this area from inside our house, and going out during the storm wouldn't have changed anything.  So it was with a lot of trepidation we checked it out the next morning.

As you can see, I apparently did a fairly decent job packing, because I only had little fallouts here and there, with no obvious gullies forming; and apparently, my driveway ditch served its purpose to keep the top from eroding away.  Of course, all the surface dirt washed off my totally unprotected surfaces, but future development will correct that.

Amazing how well my terraces held up

Unfortunately, that's not the whole story.  My original project of building out the top of the driveway was still in a very rustic condition, to be continued later, was not as happy.  My temporary retaining wall handled a similar but shorter deluge of four inches last month, and it handled the first three inches this time, but that last three inches . . .

Oops

Oh, well

My consolation is that only a handful of blocks actually rolled all the way down the hill, and the backfill didn't go more than one terrace down, the build out is still more than it had been, and the project wasn't anywhere near finished anyway.  In a village not far from here, a young woman was crushed to death by a real retaining wall falling on her.  I can't complain.

Being as the whole terracing project is so recent and not stabilized at all, nothing has been planted yet, and there's no surface protection like mulch, I think I came out okay.  Of course, there is now a lot of silt and gravel down at the bottom of the hill, but that's to be expected on a regular basis.

Ah, life in the South of France.  Not like one usually imagines.