2 Year old lawn

princess007

Hi,
I moved into a new build in 2017 and a new lawn was seeded for us. After the Winter we have had the lawn is just incredibly wet and patchy and needs a lot more grass. One bit of rain and it becomes incredibly wet and can't be user. Last year when I fed it and added an aftercut product the lawn was quite green and the weeds died and was not too bad. This year, right now it is just a mud bath out there.

I have recently began to dig a foundation for a shed and have discovered under the lawn about and inch and a half under the top soil it is full of bricks, large stones and construction waste. Could this be the reason for the poor state of the lawn? There is also a massive tree to the rear of us in our neighbours house, probably more than 50 years old and very tall, could this be a problem for us?

I am getting a shed base down, just wondering should I get the mini digger to just take away all the lawn and put down some rolled turf lawn?

Would love to hear opinions!! I am hoping the garden can be used by kids to play football in and to have a flower bed or 2. It's about 30 square meters in total.

Thanks

Lumen

The tree is more likely to be helping than hindering to be honest - your problem is lack of drainage and the tree will be drawing some of that water away.

The construction waste isn't necessarily all of the problem, since grass will grow on almost anything as long as it's well drained (untrafficked parts of a gravel driveway, and golf putting greens are laid over sand), but when heavy machinery tracks repeatedly over typical Irish clay soil during construction it becomes heavily compacted and therefore poor draining. So your problem is a combination of thin topsoil, construction waste and compacted soil underneath.

Replacing the turf won't solve the problem more than temporarily, you need to sort out the drainage issues, which may involve removing a lot of that construction waste and maybe putting in some proper land drains (ideally draining to the public drain if that's legal, otherwise a soak pit, maybe a question for the Construction and Planning forum).

Essentially what you want is a good amount topsoil over something which drains, but the details of drainage matter, and depend on the site (where it slopes to, where the water comes from etc).

Consider that whilst lawn doesn't need much topsoil itself, if you have ambitions for the garden you will want at least the few feet near the borders to be deep enough (maybe a foot) to service shrubs and trees you plant there. So you might, for instance, dig deeper and lay more topsoil around the edges than in the centre of the lawn. And obvs go as far to the boundary as you can without compromising any walls or fences you have.

This is mostly DIY-able but you might want to engage a landscaper.

blackbox

It used to be a tradition to grow potatoes on a new site the year before planting a lawn.

I guess the theory was that the potatoes would break up the compacted soil - no doubt helped by digging them out.