So your member page says you live in the US, so your zone 8 might be Texas, might be Washington State. Either way you don't really need the crush gravel base, but a little sand is probably a good thing. I don't feel that having landscape fabric underneath is a good idea, but that might just be because I hate the stuff. It might not hurt. Other than that, I think the comments I made on the concurrent thread about laying a flagstone pathway would also apply to you. In addition, however, I would keep the gaps between your stones pretty narrow as placing chair legs can be hazardous with large gaps. You want solid footing with the firepit. Nice quip on the floating deck thread about having flammables handy for the fire if you made a wood deck ... on that note, does landscape fabric burn?

In addition to the many uses listed above, I have a few more, some of them related to the animal adjuncts to gardening: Put a hot water bottle in the bottom of the bucket and cover it with a towel. You now have an emergency carrier for newborn lambs, kids, kittens, puppies, and all other small creatures. Cover them with another towel or blanket and they'll stay cozy while you work. Having them in the bucket means you have your hands free to hold flashlights and open gates. Extra handling is eliminated and there isn't such a large risk of dropping the youngster(s) as there would be if you carried them in your arms. Put an inch of sand in the bottom. Set up a heat lamp and you have a nursery for chicks, ducklings, rabbits. Punch holes in a lid for a cover that eliminates escapes. You can keep the babies in the bathroom where it's warm without finding strays in the kitchen in the morning. Put an inch of sand in the bottom and add a couple of inches of water and you have a swimming pool for ducklings. I am NOT cleaning the duck poo out of the bathtub again. Fill with sand/rocks/water and put on lids to make stands and playground equipment for the goats. Use as a container for aquatic plants you're putting in a pond. The bale makes for easier lifting. Cut out the bottom and make a 'basket' for nerf basketball. Set upright and filled with rocks, dirt and straw and partially sunk, they make nesting boxes for ducks. Nailed horizontally and filled with straw, they make nesting boxes for chickens. Fill with sand and put in the back of a vehicle to give it additional weight or use the sand to give traction on ice or snow. Make manure tea. A lid is a wonderful thing. Set a flower pot inside and the bucket will help stabilize it while you're driving to deliver a plant to a friend. And even if the plant does turn over, the dirt and water won't go into the carpet. Punch holes in the lid of a bucket and use it as a car carrier for rabbits, puppies, and any other small creature you don't have a regular transport crate for. Ray

I can't say much about the long term since I've only been living in this house for a couple years but I'm strongly with the "the heck with em" camp about pests and diseases. I do try to rotate my gardens around (not planting the same thing in the same spot all the time with annuals.) I am very firmly against buying bagged dirt, Just costs way too much. I do get mushroom compost when I can and I have used the free compost from the county too (ya just gotta watch out for glass in it.) We collect most of the neighborhood bagged leaves and grass clippings for the gardens and compost. We ask tree services working in the area if they need a place to dump the chips they can do it at our house. We compost and have a worm farm. I figure the more biologically active I can make the soil, the less likely the negative stuff can out compete and proliferate. About the only things I've sprayed as pesticides or whatnot, were thruicide, organocide, and neem. My biggest problem seems to be potassium deficiency. I spray with maxicrop but that gets costly when I have most of my yard growing squash, pumpkins, zucchini and cucumbers that are all asking for more potassium (powdery mildew tends to attack those plants when they are weak on potassium.) Anyway, most of my gardens started as "lasagna gardens" with cardboard and mulch and mushroom compost. We don't till though occasionally we will for or spade through a bed after harvest to try to get rid of most of the annoying grasses. I can't really see replacing soil though if a particular bed or area seemed to get "toxic" I would probably knock it down and leave it fallow if I couldn't find something that wanted to grow there as a cover crop. I only add organic matter. I don't buy "top soil" or even "sand". I don't even buy bagged potting mix anymore. I just make a mix of old garden or potting soil mixed with new mushroom compost, other compost, some home mixed organic fertilizer and worm castings and call it new potting mix. I figure the more composted stuff around, the better everything will be inoculated to the possible diseases. I can't say for certain the long term effects of my methods as they have only been going on a couple years but I seem to be doing well so far. Here is a link that might be useful: TCLynx

The best border treatment I have found for our yard is simply a 4" deep groove dug with a straight sod shovel. you then rake the soil or mulch etc. away from the grass to leave an edge of exposed grass roots. This gives you automatic air root pruning to prevent the grass from creeping into the play area. It just has to be refreshed each spring and/or spot treated as needed. And it's really easy on the pocket book, never needs to be replaced, can be adjusted to changes in your landscaping without any difficulty. I learned this from my neighbors, who are scary in their meticulous care of their yard. Trust me, if there was a better way to do it, they would. It really gives a very clean definition to different ares of the yard. Good luck. Martha