Turning Garden into a Lawn

garv123

Hi, Hope I can get some advice on this when we start the process, Ill try and upload some pics as we go along.

We bought a house last year, about to 3/4 of an acre of a site. The grass was left as more of a field than a lawn, Full of weeds, rough and uneven ground.
We'd like to tackle it ourselves with some friends with some bigger equipment.

A friend is in the process of taking away 2 poly tunnels that were looking worse for ware, and we had no use for them, so thats the first starting point for us.

What are our best steps to take and in what order?
Kill off the grass and weeds first I assume? Hoping to start in May, is that a good time do do that?

We'll have access to a small digger to move topsoil around and fill holes/hollows, a bobcat to collect stones and a farmer friend has a rotavator.

macraignil

That sounds like a very big area for just a lawn. If you have children or pets that would like a play area even part of that as grass could be sufficient. There are a lot of more interesting things to do with a garden that size but it all depends on what you want to use the area for. If you left some of it as a wildflower meadow it would require less cutting, look better with less work and provide more support for pollinators that are in trouble from a number of environmental factors. I'd also suggest planting some trees would be a big improvement to many larger gardens.

garv123

macraignil wrote: »

That sounds like a very big area for just a lawn. If you have children or pets that would like a play area even part of that as grass could be sufficient. There are a lot of more interesting things to do with a garden that size but it all depends on what you want to use the area for. If you left some of it as a wildflower meadow it would require less cutting, look better with less work and provide more support for pollinators that are in trouble from a number of environmental factors. I'd also suggest planting some trees would be a big improvement to many larger gardens.

Maybe lawn was the wrong word to use.
I wont have any of it as perfect lawn with half inch grass. it'll be more clean looking grass, on level ground that not full of dock leaves and big clumps of grass, that isnt hardship to mow like what I have at the minute. People and animals will be free to play wherever they want on it.

positron

Keeping grass neat looking is a hard work whichever way you look at it - unless you are ready to invest good amount of money and time into it, and continue doing that year after year.

I agree with macraignil about making better use of the space available, and supporting bees etc. But of course it's all down to individual preferences and circumstances. Enjoy the process - a good garden is hugely rewarding!

standardg60

I'd start spraying now if you want to rotovate and relevel in may. That way you'd have time to do a second spray on any regrowth and the existing grass will have rotted sufficiently to make rotovating much easier

garv123

Whats wrong with a person wanting his own property to be grass thats easy to cut twice a week? Grass isn't expensive to maintain. The majority of people just cut it and spray weeds occasionally and there's nothing wrong with it. Is grass now gone soft like some people are?

Shaunoc

Go on the Garv. Nice big field of spuds, show them all

magicbastarder

garv123 wrote: »

Whats wrong with a person wanting his own property to be grass thats easy to cut twice a week?

if that's what you want, that's what you want. i'd haggle over the 'easy to cut twice a week' comment given you mentioned it's three quarters of an acre, but there are lots of alternatives to a lawn people have been suggesting, with reason.

macraignil

garv123 wrote: »

Whats wrong with a person wanting his own property to be grass thats easy to cut twice a week? Grass isn't expensive to maintain. The majority of people just cut it and spray weeds occasionally and there's nothing wrong with it. Is grass now gone soft like some people are?

magicbastarder wrote: »

if that's what you want, that's what you want. i'd haggle over the 'easy to cut twice a week' comment given you mentioned it's three quarters of an acre, but there are lots of alternatives to a lawn people have been suggesting, with reason.

As mentioned you are free to do what you want with your garden and if you like cutting grass twice a week then work away and plant three quarters of an acre of grass. Where I live we have left the area at the front of the house still as pasture and it gets grazed regularly so there is no need for it getting mowed. There is an area of lawn to the side and back of the house that would add up to somewhere between one quarter and half an acre and we are lucky enough that the girlfriends father calls over to our side of the road with his ride on lawn mower when he is cutting his own grass and does ours at the same time. Even disposing of the piles of cut grass still adds up to about an hour of work each time it is cut and it simply is one of the garden jobs I like less than others. I would prefer to have less lawn myself as I think the trees and shrubs and flower beds give much more to the garden than the lawn but the girlfriend wants it there so I planted it. I have seen and read some material on wildflower meadows and they do seem to provide something nicer to look at than standard short cut grass and are also said to be less work to maintain. I mentioned trees as they give shelter in the garden and make it a nicer place to spend time in.



At least being in charge of the gardening in my own garden I can manage the weeds etc. without the poison sprays that are used too much in my opinion. One of the most common weed killers - roundup/glyphosate has been linked with increased risk of cancer and many other sprays used in the garden are toxic and I don't agree with the statement that there is nothing wrong with using these. For me I like to be in the garden to enjoy my surroundings and polluting the area with chemical sprays simply would make this less enjoyable. I also think manually controlling weeds is more effective as many of the most problematic weeds have strategies that allow them recover very quickly from herbicide applications. Many sprays and chemical lawn treatments would kill daisies and clover which I like and find are easily controlled by mowing, but again this is just the way I like to do things in my own garden. I just replied to your post to give my opinion and again since it's your garden feel free to ignore my comments anyway.

garv123

magicbastarder wrote: »

if that's what you want, that's what you want. i'd haggle over the 'easy to cut twice a week' comment given you mentioned it's three quarters of an acre, but there are lots of alternatives to a lawn people have been suggesting, with reason.

The site is roughly that, then there's the house shed and patio and tarmac and surround on 4 sides and driveway, so not all grass. And i already cut it as is, with a push lawnmower. Not afraid of a of exercise.

Ultimate Seduction

If you have access to the digger, rotavator and bobcat, is there really a need to spray it?

garv123

Ultimate Seduction wrote: »

If you have access to the digger, rotavator and bobcat, is there really a need to spray it?

Finally, That's the advice I'm after.. The grass is probably 6-8 inches high, poor quality, big tufts, dips and hollows that bottom the lawnmower out, with a lot of weeds and dock leaves. What steps would you take?

Ultimate Seduction

garv123 wrote: »

Finally, That's the advice I'm after.. The grass is probably 6-8 inches high, poor quality, big tufts, dips and hollows that bottom the lawnmower out, with a lot of weeds and dock leaves. What steps would you take?

I was asking the question rather than give advice, but I'd be turning it over now dig out all roots with digger, add a load of good clean top soil to level it and off you go

Lumen

The landscaper I used for my garden refurb had a specialist towed machine for preparing and seeding.

It was a bit like a cross between a power rake, seeder and roller.

macraignil

garv123 wrote: »

Finally, That's the advice I'm after.. The grass is probably 6-8 inches high, poor quality, big tufts, dips and hollows that bottom the lawnmower out, with a lot of weeds and dock leaves. What steps would you take?

You mentioned in your opening post about posting some photos. This might help people see what you are dealing with. The area around our house was on a slope with rocks instead of soil in a few places so making the entire area into a lawn would have been very labour intensive if not impossible. It made sense in our case to just leave some of the most uneven pieces for growing trees and shrubs and flowers but maybe your site is more even. When we had the digger lay out the soil in a roughly even pattern after the builder left he did recommend running over the lawn area again with a harrow to make it more even. It still took a fair bit of manual raking and picking out the larger stones on the surface but I was able to use these to mark out areas where I planted flowers and shrubs. There is a mechanical stone burier machine that you might be able to hire in if you don't want to manually pick out the stones revealed by the digger. I have the advantage of being able to get wheelbarrows full of used horse bedding for filling in the stony areas in my own garden over the last few years so this may also have influenced the approach I have taken with the most uneven parts of the garden. After the digger which was a big one there were only a few surviving dock roots to remove and we did not need to spray.


I posted a video of what we have done with our own garden since the builder finished nearly five years ago and you can see there was very little level ground to work with so my experience could be significantly different than what you are facing.

blackbox

macraignil wrote: »

That sounds like a very big area for just a lawn. If you have children or pets that would like a play area even part of that as grass could be sufficient. There are a lot of more interesting things to do with a garden that size but it all depends on what you want to use the area for. If you left some of it as a wildflower meadow it would require less cutting, look better with less work and provide more support for pollinators that are in trouble from a number of environmental factors. I'd also suggest planting some trees would be a big improvement to many larger gardens.

I wouldn't consider 3/4 acres to be a big area for a lawn unless it is in a housing estate.

macraignil

blackbox wrote: »

I wouldn't consider 3/4 acres to be a big area for a lawn unless it is in a housing estate.

Just spent about 8 hours over the weekend raking grass off about half an acre since the mower was broken over the winter and it got too long for the bag to pick up the cuttings. Would have much preferred to get a bit more of the vegetable patch dug up instead. Maybe I'm just in a bit of an anti-lawn mood at the moment but I think it's more likely I just don't like lawns in general. They just seem to be a lot of work for so little in return.