ᐅ Creating a Gravel Garden Bed Yourself When There Is No Basement?

Hello.
I have read a lot in the forum about creating a gravel bed. This is supposed to serve as splash protection. We also find it visually appealing. In the forum, I have seen many things about minimum depth and other aspects to consider. I am not sure if you have to pay attention to the minimum depth and so on when you don’t have a basement. We will definitely build without a basement. Can’t you simply remove the topsoil around the house by a few centimeters (maybe about 10cm (4 inches), or enough height to place an edging stone) and then fill this area with gravel? Removing that much soil should be enough to spread some gravel over the exposed spots. This way, you get the aesthetic effect we like, and it should also serve as splash protection. I am just a complete layperson, but from my feeling, I don’t understand why you would need to dig so deep, especially if building without a basement. A drainage system is not necessary for us either. That might be the only reasonable reason for excavating the often mentioned 80cm (31 inches).
What do you think about this? Is deep excavation not necessary if you build without a basement and consider drainage unnecessary?
Kind regards

Hello,

Where is the water supposed to infiltrate? Do you already have 10cm (5 inches) of permeable soil?

Otherwise, a certain depth is needed to allow infiltration and to provide some sort of "buffer."

Oh, so the depth is about infiltration. I hadn’t considered that. As a layperson, I don’t quite understand why infiltration is related to the depth. Right next to the gravel bed, there is grass. Water also normally infiltrates there. So the reasoning behind this point is not clear to me. Could you please explain it to me?

As far as I know, this concerns the splash guard. The depth is mainly because the edge stones need to be embedded quite deeply in concrete to ensure long-term stability. In our case, the foundation cushion stands almost 50cm (20 inches) above ground level, so there is no soil directly against the house. Is it different for you?

hemali2003 schrieb:
. Our base layer is almost 50 cm (20 inches) above ground level – there is no soil directly against the house. Is it different for you?

That's right. It should actually extend beyond the foundation everywhere. How exactly are you supposed to dig it out?!

I’m not sure – I thought you could dig out some space at the edge (since the cushion is looser there than in the center) and then set the edging stones. That’s my amateur theory – I don’t know if it actually works that way.

Maybe many people fill in on both sides (topsoil and gravel), so they don’t have to set the stones that deep?