Between work, the heat, and dealing with clay soil this took way too long to complete! I love how it turned out. The next step is using a hoe to slope the soil over the gravel, tamp it down, and plant some sedum ternatum for groundcover.
That is amazing! It looks great! Makes me want to get out in the garden and do something similar
Thanks! It is very involved from planning to actually doing the work and deciding how you want it to look. Some edging serves as a retaining wall which means there's a lot more to do. I called 811 first to get the utility lines marked and after that I sprayed my line. My plan was to trench as close to 8.5 inches as possible at each level. That's 3.5 inches for paver base, 1 inch for sand, and then 4 inches for the stone. The incline was the most annoying part because if it wasn't a 2 foot height difference I wouldn't have to have been extra meticulous.
I used my levels to mark the depth as i went and then used crushed concrete as the paver base. Tamped it down then laid the 1 inch of sand. I set the pavers down on the stretch of sand and used both my torpedo level and 30 inch level to get em right. Once the pavers fell below the soil level I'd do the step up using the top of the previous paver level as where the next level's sand would end, so the paver base would start approximately 4.5 inches below the top of the lower level. Some areas did not get as much paver base due to sprinkler lines. Also because of the sprinkler lines I did not use a trenching shovel and used a spade and transfer shovel with some slow digging if I felt resistance.
After it was done I double checked the leveling, using sand for any wobbling and putting it in between the cracks. There's enough gapping that water will drain through. I had extra paver base so I used that for the backfill to help further prevent any shifting.
Some of the resources that I remember:
https://www.lowes.com/n/how-to/create-a-border-using-edging-stones https://youtu.be/E5dSvJB-d3g https://youtu.be/OkySCQSSn4U