Need paver base and/or leveling sand for edging?

Hi,

Brand new here and hoping I'm posting in the right place. I've been researching on installing an edging border for our back yard. We bought the home a few years ago and there were a few things that the previous owners did that kind of defied logic, so we're in the process of fixing those things.

One of them is that they installed fencing with a solid foot of gap between the bottom of the fence and the ground (don't ask me why, your guess is as good as mine). Underneath the fencing, they put in some kind of narrow rock bed with landscape fabric and what I *think* is sandy portland cement of some kind. To cap it off, they used white wood boards up against the fence posts to act as an edger. Ugh.

We're getting rid of all of that and putting in a line of bricks up against the sidewalk and concrete scalloped edgers in front. Eventually we plan to plant berry bushes up along the fence in our back yard to cover up the stupid gap.

My main question is this: do I still need to buy paver base and/or leveling sand for the brick border? (And for the edgers too, for that matter?) I did a quick dig to see what was underneath the rocks and like I said earlier, it looks like a crumbly mix of cement, sand and gravel and it seems to go deep too. I plan to buy a trenching spade and really get into it this weekend to see what's under there. I was kind of thinking (hoping, since it would save $$$) it might be possible to just reuse the existing cement/sand mix and just tamp it down and be done with it and top it off with polymeric sand once I get everything in place.

Goal is to do this over Memorial weekend.

Well it doesn’t explain the foot gap between the ground and the fence but the rock border buried in the ground underneath the fence line was probably originally done to deter animals from digging their way into the yard.... that foot gap though doesn’t fall within that theory though so perhaps they just really hate using s lawn edger and wanted to be able to run their mower right up close to the fence to trim the edge lawn...

I don’t have enough experience with laying bricks to provide any sort of valuable information but from my very limited experience the paver base will lay much easier if you put down your crushed rock base then the sand layer to provide the ability to level and smooth out the brick.

If your existing base would allow you to achieve that then my guess is that you would be good to go.

If you're just doing it to fill the gap and not create a walking surface, I'd dig out the topsoil and put in a layer of sand to allow easier leveling.