
10/04/2025
**I am a beginner. 36 yr old female, mother of four littles with no landscaping training 😆 with only online inspiration blazing my trails lol***
Almost complete! I started building this 75’ by like 10’ landscaping berm last summer. My husband was busy with other projects but I REALLY wanted to get it started. So at 7 months pregnant I started creating this on my own. I got resourceful and found three different people needing to dump dirt somewhere. They all delivered to my house for free. My awesome neighbor came over with his small tractor to help dump buckets of dirt down the berm while I spread it with a shovel.
I forgot to mention I had already spray painted the outline of my berm area and manually edged the whole thing.. jumping on my edger hundreds of times at 8 months pregnant 🙈😂 in 90 degree weather 🤪
It was our first year with a pool so I definitely had some nice dips in there after my work was done.
Many of my plants you see were transplanted by me. I’d find people on FB marketplace, craigslist etc who wanted trees or bushes removed for whatever reason. I’d personally go dig them up and bring them home. My favorite, being the big green Japanese maple on the far right of my berm. The branches underneath the canopy are so neat. I paid $50 for it but put in some hard working removing it from the couples property..
This year, I had more free dirt delivered because the soil had compacted over winter and I wanted to build it up a bit more. I needed more surface area for my new plants to go in before mulch was added.
My husband has time off this summer so he mulched the whole berm yesterday. It’s looking beautiful. I am very pleased with it ☺️ The backside still needs mulch though. Eventually a nice wood horse fence will be placed on the backside of the berm to fence in our pasture. I’m excited for that extra esthetic.
I found a wholesale mill outfit locally to me. It’s where the landscape supply company’s get their product from. It’s a minimum of 10 yards because the size of bucket they use. It’s mostly semi trucks and large rigs picking up product there. My father in law drove his dump truck and got two loads of mulch for us. But we saved a lot of money. Instead of paying $45 a yard for mulch, we paid $12.50 a yard 👏🏻👏🏻 This has allowed us to get much more beautiful mulch for less.
If anyone has anything they’d like to add let me know! What should we add next? 😄