The gardens at my former home had a lot in common with your conditions, Lyn. The house was built on a steep slope, with a raised, two-tiered retaining wall in the back yard. The void created by the retaining wall was filled with 3/4 crushed stone, topped off with about 6 inches of top soil. So every time I planted a rose, I had to remove at least 5 gallons of gravel. I eventually built a giant sieve on wheels that looked something like a gurney. I would dump shovelfuls of gravely soil on top of the screen, then rake it back and forth with a garden hoe. There was a catchment below for the soil to fall into, and then I would put the crushed stone into buckets. For a while I had to have landscapers take the gravel away, because I would dig up so much of it year after year. But then one year a neighbor who was installing a dry well asked me if he could have the pile of gravel I had accumulated behind the garden shed. I welcomed him to it!
