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easement, like a legal easement?
Best double check before you get to tearing apart. I've watched enough Judge Judy to know this may be fought with peril$$$$.

Before you do any work, check to make sure your "very old easement" is no longer a legally valid easement. Depending on what it's for, any trees you plant there could be cut down for vehicle passage, or to install a pipeline. Check the legal status of the easement before you go any further.

Skip the landscapers. Check with your local rock/gravel/soil supplier for yardage prices. If you're in a place where people dig basements, you might inquire with the people who do the digging and who may need a free dump site.

Fuk it,do with it what you want- it's easier to ask forgiveness rather than asking for permission.

Happy landscaping! We need more folks like yourself that cares about their surroundings. BOOM!

@glooper and @Sector2 are telling you the truth. An easement means that somebody owns the rights to that piece of land. If that somebody is not you and you go digging it up then you will be responsible for making it usable again. There are lots of cases where people let their easement set for many years without using it. There is a property close to mine that belongs to a family who lives in a different state. The man who bought the property has died. His children now own the property. They haven't even came to look at it. I Know that some day they will show up. It's just a matter of when.
Do not do anything else to that easement until you find out for sure that you can legally change that piece of land.
Even after decades of ignoring a piece of land people have a tendency to go ballistic if someone screws with their property. I've even seen cases where someone would purposely let an easement set unused until someone starts doing what you are doing. Then they come in screaming bloody murder demanding their easement to be repaired and demanding that you pay for it.
Be careful pal.

Lots of construction companies have free or cheap fill dirt. Use that cheap or free dirt to do most of the filling. Leave 3" or so and fill the rest with manure from a farmer that is also cheep and/or free. Then till the soil 6-8" deep. You now have free/cheap soil ready to plant grass and whatever else you could want.

A landscaping company will charge incredible amounts to do what you can yourself for free/cheap.

Yes. A landscaping company can bring you topsoil to put down and you can plant grass and trees in it. Assuming it's an area that can grow that stuff. I think that there is even a topsoil mix that will speed up the seedling stages of grass and trees to help get it all started.

Go to your local garden supply store.
Usually they have different grades of dirt/rock in the back.
They can load a pickup full of topsoil for around $20.
Otherwise you can arrange for a whole dump truck delivered and dumped on the driveway for $100.