Landscaping soil for garden.

-taff

Is that fence in the distance your neighbour? Because if you're planning to raise and lower and change the height of what you have, you will have to ensure all that stuff stays in your garden, which means a retaining wall of some description. 

couriervanman

homeless9 said:

MovingForwards said:

Can you take a photo of your garden so we can see what you have, are trying to work with and can then comment better as I'm sure members could actually come up with some good, budget conscious ideas rather than having to keep referring back to your other posts to see what has already been suggested.

Lines show new height / shape of soil once dumped into the ditch.

Currently the slope is too steep for a lawn/turf to be put down. By creating a 's' shaped bank it will make it more suitable for a lawn as I could then at least step down onto the stepped / flatter bits to mow if the sloped bits are still too steep to stand on / mow on.

As far as my quick research goes I have seen a delivery of 20 tons of topsoil is £700, then me raking it around for free and sowing some £30 box of grass seed and bobs your uncle I have fixed this ugly void. Whereas decking would be £1000+ I guess and retaining walls etc would be even more.

or I could just throw down some wild flower seeds and just let the whole area be a wild meadow for £25.

Id be more worried if it all slips away in a bad spell of heavy rain.......side of the house looks a bit close to the edge for my liking

Davesnave

couriervanman said:

homeless9 said:

MovingForwards said:

Can you take a photo of your garden so we can see what you have, are trying to work with and can then comment better as I'm sure members could actually come up with some good, budget conscious ideas rather than having to keep referring back to your other posts to see what has already been suggested.

Lines show new height / shape of soil once dumped into the ditch.

Currently the slope is too steep for a lawn/turf to be put down. By creating a 's' shaped bank it will make it more suitable for a lawn as I could then at least step down onto the stepped / flatter bits to mow if the sloped bits are still too steep to stand on / mow on.

As far as my quick research goes I have seen a delivery of 20 tons of topsoil is £700, then me raking it around for free and sowing some £30 box of grass seed and bobs your uncle I have fixed this ugly void. Whereas decking would be £1000+ I guess and retaining walls etc would be even more.

or I could just throw down some wild flower seeds and just let the whole area be a wild meadow for £25.

Id be more worried if it all slips away in a bad spell of heavy rain.......side of the house looks a bit close to the edge for my liking

Building regs stipulate 1m of foundations under houses these days, but whatever the OP does in the way of filling-in, it won't bring the house closer to the edge, will it?

I agree with taff that the conjunction with the neighbour's property needs careful thought, which is why I asked earlier about what happens at the fence boundary.

We used to have a slope as steep as that one at my workplace. As it's now been there for over 70 years, there would seem to be no danger of slumping because of gradient alone, but I suspect it was not just soil. It was grassed and the maintenance guys used to cut it from the top with a petrol Flymo on the end of a strong rope!

RAS

I'm inclined towards spiders idea.
homeless, you are not going to be able to alter the profile of the ground at the point were your boundary meets next door, either at the far end or at the point from which you took the photo. 

I'd suggest that you build a ramp from one side of the garden across the slope, bisecting it diagonally, enabling you to get a wheel barrow (and mower if you want) down to the fence line. For that your starting point will be some hardcore which you can collect locally for nothing.  

Looking at it I suspect that it would be best if the high point was to the left of the picture gradually sloping down towards the back of the picture, but that may only be because of the way the photo taken. And you may wat to put a turning point in part way down and make a 180 degree change in direction. The slope doesn't have to be even, in fact it will be more interesting if it's not. You may need to embed some large chunks on the downward side and cut into the upside a bit. 

Then add the sort of stuff Dave's been using and finally gravel etc depending on what's appropriate locally. Then plant the slopes with groundcover, low shrubs rather than grass. You don't need to massively improve the soil all over the slope, just a decent sized planting zone for each shrub. Think, the smaller hebes, viburnum, potentilia, santolina etc with a few taller specimens to add interest. Sure Dave would have a lot of ideas.

You would be advised to talk to the neighbours on both sides about how you want to manage your mutual boundaries. A decent sized shrub in front of the second post from the left would do a lot to improve privacy in both gardens, for example. 

The bottom of the ditch looks like dry shade much of the years but I'd be tempted to throw some foxglove and honesty seed along it in the short term to get a bit of height and colour, maybe some hellebores for the spring and think about it later.

homeless9

Davesnave said:

couriervanman said:

Id be more worried if it all slips away in a bad spell of heavy rain.......side of the house looks a bit close to the edge for my liking

Building regs stipulate 1m of foundations under houses these days, but whatever the OP does in the way of filling-in, it won't bring the house closer to the edge, will it?

The builder said to me something under the house goes the height of the house deep, something to do with the foundations.

There is also a drain system running under the grassed area in that embankment. So if the soil somehow collapsed it would reveal a drainage system......so there is a solid structure in the embankment.

The soil that is there is only likely to disappear due to 10's of years of weathering, it would be so gradual that you could do something about it, it's not going to just collapse.

homeless9

Davesnave said:

I agree with taff that the conjunction with the neighbour's property needs careful thought, which is why I asked earlier about what happens at the fence boundary.

Nothing happens. Nothing would cross into the neighbours boundary and there would be no risk of me making their embankment weaker. So not sure what the concern may be? I will be keeping 1 or 2 feet within the boundary line as it is right now and I will plant hedges/bushes/plants there to form a screen.

The embankment is not going to collapse.

The embankment is clay soil so is easy to sculpt and sticks together

As it stands I am going to try to make 1 step/ledge by shifting the soil/clay. Original drawing I uploaded showed 2 'steps'. Instead I will create a larger 'step'. Then I will decide if I need to top it up with soil, either to make the ledge/step higher, or simply because I don't have enough soil/clay to play with as it is to form a consistent ledge. Then once I am happy with the new shaped sloped, I will lay turf which should toughen up the embankment/slope and make it less prone to weathering. So all in all this area, once complete, should be more sturdy, secure and more beautiful than the exposed steep soil ditch it started as.

But feel free to point out any flaws with my scribblings. Cheers guys, for all your help.

Here is a photo showing with the blue lines the new rough / approx aim:



One other thing I need help with in coming to a decision on is a cheap way of hiding the metal fence which stretches for 14m along the garden edge. I am assuming there may be some 6 foot to 10 foot trees/bushes/grasses that may be suitable / not too expensive that I could use to form a screen? I have tried looking, I have come across bamboo, but that seems too expensive to cover a 14m length. I have come across grasses like this pictured and linked below...

Does anyone have any other recommendations? Thanks

https://www.gardenersdream.co.uk/white-alba-cortaderia-selloana-pampas-grass-pumila-tall-feathery-decorative-p368

-taff

RAS said: homeless, you are not going to be able to alter the profile of the ground at the point were your boundary meets next door, either at the far end or at the point from which you took the photo.

The concern is as above really. You want to do something like the orange line below but the next door neighbours are still going to have the blue line profile.

homeless9

-taff said:

RAS said: homeless, you are not going to be able to alter the profile of the ground at the point were your boundary meets next door, either at the far end or at the point from which you took the photo.

The concern is as above really. You want to do something like the orange line below but the next door neighbours are still going to have the blue line profile.

ah yes, this is fine. I won't be touching their gardens.

MovingForwards

What were the initial ideas when you viewed the house and saw it? How did those ideas change while you were waiting to complete the purchase?
Have you watched many YouTube videos to see what can be done? 

Seeing the photos on both of your posts and having a couple of days to think.

You could do ledges with a few decent sized steps to get to each one.

The 'fence' between your neighbours, whilst it's nice, gives an almost rural feel, you will need to put a secondary fence in for the lower section to avoid loss of your hard work into their gardens and to keep soil in yours.

Have some climbing plants going up the metal fence to hide it. Depending on the amount of sun it would be clematis / honeysuckle etc.

Pampas grass isn't a 'modern' plant to grow. 

Do you want an easy to maintain space?
Do you want something you can potter around in?
Do you want to get into gardening and be more involved than simply letting seeds / plants get on with it? 

I know what I would be doing with that lower part and that would be turning it over to runner beans / peas up the metal fence. With various root veg / greens across the levels. 
Fruit bushes, leafy green and herbs where the lawn is, keeping a section of it to turn into a patio with hardstanding and lovely custom / bespoke seating, a permanent BBQ / fire pit made from bricks etc.

homeless9

MovingForwards said:

What were the initial ideas when you viewed the house and saw it? How did those ideas change while you were waiting to complete the purchase?
Have you watched many YouTube videos to see what can be done? 

Seeing the photos on both of your posts and having a couple of days to think.

You could do ledges with a few decent sized steps to get to each one.

The 'fence' between your neighbours, whilst it's nice, gives an almost rural feel, you will need to put a secondary fence in for the lower section to avoid loss of your hard work into their gardens and to keep soil in yours.

Have some climbing plants going up the metal fence to hide it. Depending on the amount of sun it would be clematis / honeysuckle etc.

Pampas grass isn't a 'modern' plant to grow. 

Do you want an easy to maintain space?
Do you want something you can potter around in?
Do you want to get into gardening and be more involved than simply letting seeds / plants get on with it? 

I know what I would be doing with that lower part and that would be turning it over to runner beans / peas up the metal fence. With various root veg / greens across the levels. 
Fruit bushes, leafy green and herbs where the lawn is, keeping a section of it to turn into a patio with hardstanding and lovely custom / bespoke seating, a permanent BBQ / fire pit made from bricks etc.

I guess right away I didn't have any ideas for the garden. I got the house at a good price with a large garden space considering the size of the house and what the other new build houses on the plot had. Though I would have been happy to buy the house with just a 3m x 3m sized garden. I had already decided to buy the house from the photos online.

Since then I have thought - can I touch this ditch, how likely is it to flood, is the bank stable, can I put fences up here, do I need planning permission for this and that.

I have gone from thinking about raised decking on stilts, positives were it's a good solution to the problem, but probably going to cost quite a bit on money and wood rots.

I have thought about a stepped out bank from putting in railway sleepers and infilling......conclusion, too expensive, too much effort. 

I have thought about just throwing down some wild flower seeds all over the bank......easy and cheap solution, though ideally I'd like the ditch area to be somewhat usable, somewhere you can walk to. I'd like the garden to feel open as possible to emphasise the feeling of space.

The solution.....

Shifting the soil around to carve/shape out a single stepped embankment. Likely buying in a few tonnes of topsoil. Then turf. I will have a set of steps going down one end of the ditch as I think the distance from the top of the ditch to this single ledge will be too large to step down onto.

Positives.
1. I make the garden feel like a more expansive/open space.
2. I make the ditch area usable.
3. I can probably do this myself for under £700.
4. The turf can protect the currently exposed soil from weathering.

Negatives.
1. More mowing.


Other things:

-I don't want to get involved in gardening. I just want a basic garden that is private and feels as large as possible.

-The garden will just be an area to relax in.

-The bottom of the ditch is unusable as far as I can see. We had heavy rainfall here a few weeks ago and it does collect water. The ditch is large it and goes on for a long distance, it might even go on for miles. It would have to rain heavily for many days, probably weeks for that ditch to fill up. I noticed the 5 inches of water that was in the ditch a few weeks ago was moving like a stream out of my garden. It did clear fairly quickly once the rain had stopped. So the bottom area of the ditch will just be left as soil. Maybe I could turf right down to the metal fence just to give that extra assurance that my soil stays in my garden. I just don't know how well the turf will survive down there once it has been flooded a few times in a short period of time. Maybe it will be fine, just a bit waterlogged / boggy.


If you can fault my plan then please let me know if there is anything important I am not considering. In relation to turf preventing soil erosion....I have made this assumption and not actually fact checked this, but seeing as it seems to provide a kind of matted netting I assume it must act as a protective layer which prevents soil from shifting about.

Can I just grow plants up a metal fence that doesn't belong to me? I assume not, but maybe it's easy to get away with as that metal fence belongs to network rail and I am not sure how often someone from network rail goes walking alongside a wooded railway embankment and even if they did, would they make a note of some plants growing on their fence and come knocking on my door?