Garden in need of restoration

Working_Mum

I have recently cleared a HUGE area of gravel from my garden by hand (zero chance of any mechanical intervention as my garden is down a set of steps ) - I found rubble bags were not very useful as they kept splitting and were difficult to carry - so I used the strong shopping bags from the supermarket instead - they are easier to handle and didn't split. I took them to the tip, emptied them and refilled them.

I also used one of these to improve the texture of the soil in my garden - it's been great 


I set up an old table and had a conveyor belt going - bag full of dodgy soil at one end -  sieved the soil at the table back into another shopping bag and then redistributed the soil around my garden. The stones etc either went in a bag for the tip or nicer ones I kept for use in my garden.

I found I could do ten minutes here and there and the job wasn't too onerous for me.

Laying turf etc is easy enough but you need to make sure your base is level and without any big lumps/stones etc. There is a Gardening area on this forum which is super helpful for ideas and inspiration.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/categories/greenfingered-moneysaving

iwant2asave

Thanks everyone, great suggestions...think I'm gonna attempt using some kind of sieve and see how I get on and take it from there!

FlorayG

iwant2asave said:

FlorayG said:

Are you in a new build? Because that looks like subsoil and if it is you won't get anything but weeds to grow
Then there are two options;
Buy a wildflower mix and sow that, pull out the nasty weeds but by bit and have a wildflower meadow - wild flowers LOVE dreadful soil, that's why most people struggle to grow them
Or have it mechanically scraped and buy in several tons of decent topsoil. Once that has settled, get turf laid

Thank you.  Not a new build about 60 years old property.

The soil/weeds/stones etc are mainly a result of an extension that was done and the garden not cleared properly. 

So that's the stuff that was dug out in order to put in the footings for the extension? If so, then that's subsoil. Don't waste your time sieving it, just get it removed. You probably have some decent topsoil underneath it, if not you will have to buy some

CliveOfIndia

iwant2asave said:

Thanks everyone, great suggestions...think I'm gonna attempt using some kind of sieve and see how I get on and take it from there!

It can be quite heavy work, even for a small area, but yes it's eminently do-able.  Just take it steady and don't try and do too much in one go.

One additional thing you might want to think about is drainage.  If it's currently OK then no problem.  But if you find the lawn gets waterlogged every time you get a downpour, now is the time to sort it - far easier to do it now rather than after you've laid a lovely new lawn.

Often it's just a case of improving the soil, digging in some organic matter and/or horticultural sand or grit (which does sound daft when you're trying to get rid of the stones !).  If it's really bad you can install French drains, but I'm guessing you're probably not at the stage of needing to do that.  And like I said, it may be that the drainage is perfectly OK as it is, in which case you can ignore all of what I've just said