Clueless when it comes to gardening!!!

Ainat

Hi everyone,

We've recently moved house, into an actual house. Having grown up in a masionette, and then living in shared accommodation, etc. I've only lived in a house with an actual garden once before - and that was rented so we were limited in what we could do. Now that hubby and I have bought our first house together and we have a garden that we can decide what to do with it, we want to use it.

It's not the biggest garden, about 18ft across and 25ft long, and at the moment most of it is paved, with part of it covered in bark chippings (family that lived here before had a climbing frame set up for their kid). We want to take the bark up, and some of the paving, and then grass some of it.

For the areas we want to grass over, what sort of preparation do we need to do to the ground before we lay any turf?

marvin

http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/basics/techniques/lawns_layingturf1.shtml

hope this helps

The flattening was always done by a board on the garden shows

i am equally clueless

madjackslam

Be prepared for what is underneath the paving and, to a lesser extent, the bark. There will probably be mortar/sand/maybe a bit of rubble beneath the slabs. This needs removing. And beneath that, any soil will have been pretty heavily compacted. You need to break up that compaction, so that the grass can get its roots in, but also bear in mind that the soil level may then be lower than other areas of the lawn, so you may need to sort that out too (eg, with some decent top soil). Grass needs a decent amount of light to thrive. You don't mention how shady your garden is, but it's worth considering. This might have been one of the reasons why paving was put down.