Digging out and returfing

HKitten

We only rent our house. We've been there over a year and a half though, and aren't looking to move anytime soon the one thing I find difficult to keep up with is the garden. It was easy all through winter, but with the recent sun/rain mashup, it's all suddenly sprouted out of control!

I'm not too bad at clipping back bushes - I'm not exactly making art but I can keep them tidy. But we've got this patch of 'grass' at the front of the garden and I'm not sure what to do with it. It was mainly moss and weeds when we moved in anyway, but now they've shot up to several feet in some places. There's not really any actual lawn in the entire 9x9 foot space, so I was thinking of getting someone to dig it all up and returf it.

Bearing in mind, I'm not very physically strong, so trying to do it myself is probably out of the question. Does anyone know a cheap gardener in the Bucks area who does that sort of thing, or have any alternative suggestions for how to tackle an out of control area? I'm also thinking about digging out and putting in gravel, but that's not so cheap.

benjus

I'm in a similar situation - I would recommend the following:

1. Slosh some strong weedkiller over it to kill everything
2. Wait a few weeks
3. Pay someone to dig it over and remove any remaining roots etc
4. Put down grass seed


I tried turfing my "front garden" last year - looked great for a while, but didn't really take properly and I ended up digging it all up in the spring. I've put down seed now, and as well as being much cheaper it's now looking pretty good and hopefully a lot more robust.