Renovating Garden/Replacing Turf with Gravel

busymumof3

It is high time that we paid some attention to our garden instead of inside the house. The front garden is particularly uninspiring with a triangular patch of really poor grass infested with a sort of crunchy fungi, bordered by a hedge with two smallish borders under a window and alongside the protruding garage wall and a larger border at the front. All the plants are well past their best, straggly and poorly maintained. Don't know if any are worth saving.

On the other side of the driveway we share a strip of grass with our neighbours (houses are detached).

What I thought about doing was lifting the turf and replacing with gravel so that I could plant with a few shrubs or grasses and add a few pots for colour. I thought we could also gravel the shared area if neighbours agreed. We take turns mowing and it is a mess of tree roots etc. where things have been removed in the past.

My question is whether to attempt this ourselves or get someone in to do it. We have never tackled anything on this scale before but the thought of how much it would cost to get someone in puts me off.

We would have to hire a turf cutter and pay to get rid of turf and rubble - lots of old stones, pebbles etc lying around. I have seen hippobags available from B&Q is this a service anyone has experienced and would recommend? I have a brown bin for garden waste but obviously no stones are allowed to be put in here. Also would I need to put down a membrane to stop weeds?

We also have two pallets of rustic blocks bought in a fit of madness LAST SPRING! which we have done nothing with but I thought we would use to replace the patio and path at the back of the house. Don't know whether we could utilise these.

I suppose I'm asking more experienced gardeners/landscapers whether two complete novices could make a reasonable job of it and for any advice about things I hadn't even considered.

morganb

As a complete amateur gardener I did a similar thing a couple of years ago. Here is my advice to you - you can do it but don't expect to get it done in a couple of days. Here are the steps we took :

Decide on the area to gravel and mark out.
Remove plants then mow the grass as short as possible before weedkillering the area
After a couple of weeks rake the soil to remove dead weeds and even out ground
stake down weed resistant membrane over the area then define the border (we used fixed border roll)
Measure area then calculate amount of gravel needed (supplier can do this)
Decide on type of gravel then get quotes. Bear in mind cats like 10mm "pea gravel", we went with 20mm gravel obtained from a local quarry (!) - aggregate suppliers are what you need to do the job cheaply
Gravel may be delivered bagged or tipped out of a lorry - you will need a big sheet of tarpauline for this and somewhere for the gravel to be left
Spread gravel over the area - use a bucket to load a wheelbarrow then tip gravel in piles across the membrane
Rake gravel evenly over area
Job done!

busymumof3

Thanks morganb that gives me hope that we could do it ourselves.

I can see that it will take more than a weekend as you have said. Maybe aim to do the clearance and cutting back over the first couple of weekends. Rather than kill off the grass I think I would prefer to lift the turf though as I hate weedkiller and am always a paranoid about the kids going outside when any has been put down in the past (expains the state of our drive at the moment!)

The hippobag might be a good idea as we could take our time over filling it rather than just hiring a mini skip for the weekend.

Does anyone have any experience of using a turf cutter/lifter and is it pretty foolproof?

Gorgeous_George

If you lift the turf, opile it up and use it as compost when it rots.

I've just been going the other way, replacing tonnes of gravel with new lawns. 30 sqm at the back and 80sq m at the front. It looked like Chesil Beach!

For your project, is it ok to raise the level? If so, kill the grass and lay a landscaping membrane over the top. A few inches of gravel and you're finished. It's best to start laying the gravel on a flat-ish surface.

Rather than hire a skip to get rid of any waste, I bought an old van on eBay.



GG

busymumof3

Thanks GG. THat is definitely thinking outside the box!