"Sheldon" wrote in message
oups.com...
On Oct 25, 12:19?pm, NickGrey wrote:
I've recently moved into a house with a largish garden and am looking
to landscape a 2 acre paddock alongside.

The paddock has 1 large trench down it, around 4ft deep and 12ft wide
running about 100 yds. It make mowing and groundcare a nightmare as my
tractor feels like its going to tip if I drive along it and misses
bits if I drive across it. The rest of the field also has shallower
channels/undulations of around 1ft deep by 10ft wide, which cause
problems.

Maybe the undulations were man-made to increase the surface area, but
in any case I would like to level it out but don't know where to
start.

I've got an old JCB digger and a tractor and trailer, but I would
imagine I would need literally hundreds of tons of topsoil to level
it.

I considered getting a power harrow for the undulations, would this
work? I can't see much choice but to get topsoil for the large trench
or make it into a pond, but am not keen on a pond there.

That 4' deep 12' wide 300' long ditch is there for a reason... I were
you I'd wait for some heavy rains to see what happens.... I have a
ditch about those dimensions crossing my front yard, about twice a
year it fills to the top and would be great for white water
canoing.... if I filled it in my house could be under water. In fact
this past spring there were some exceptionally heavy rains and my
ditch suffered some heavy erosion, just cost me $3,500 to have it
repaired. The entire lengh needed to be reshaped and its capaicity
increased to more easily accept the volume which is determined by a 4'
diameter culvert further upstream. The entire bed was covered with a
heavy matting and more than 60 cubic yards of stone applied.

Heavy erosion in April, that pipe is the outlet from my french drain.
http://i23.tinypic.com/15nrjad.jpg

Repair was made just two weeks ago
http://i21.tinypic.com/v4tdes.jpg

http://i23.tinypic.com/nevomo.jpg

http://i21.tinypic.com/2h37c7l.jpg

Rained last week so there's some water flowing. They returned the
next morning with a load of topsoil to repair the ruts from their
equipment and they reseeded:
http://i22.tinypic.com/209m2vc.jpg

I think they did a good job, I'm pleased.


That is a trench to be proud of.