New home: Stony backyard

kma1987

Hi folks.
I moved into a new house last year, and I have been thinking of getting my backyard professionally done for the longest time, but we never got around to it.
I have attached photos, but basically, there is grass, but its covered with messy stones and pebbles, to the point that it actually hurts to walk on it with slippers. There is also some random weeds which I have attached photos of. One weird issue is that the backyard isn't even flat: It slopes downhill about 2/3rds of the way.
This was supposed to be the backyard for a new house, and even the person doing my snagging warned me that the state of the backyard is absolutely dismal, but the builders refused to do anything.
Some months ago, the grass got really big and messy and I just got a lawnmover to cut it down.

Anyway, I am pretty new to all this, and we are not even extremely sure what we want. At some point, we would like to keep a toolshed for the lawnmover, a bicycle and maybe a few tools. Apart from that, we'd want to have some sort of stone paving and garden furniture somewhere. Some planters for flowers and vegetables or something. But I don't think I am capable enough to get all this done on my own right now. For now, I have lots of time in my hand stuck at home, and I just want to make the lawn more walkable and pleasant with actual nice grass, and I don't know where to start.

Like I said, I have moved the grass down quite a bit, but I need the extension box to cover the full lawn. Today, I went around and collected a lot of stones and put them in a bag.

Do I need to rake down towards the end of the ground to make it more level with something like a landscaping rake? Do I need to cover this up with better top soil, or should I just add fertiliser and seed? Or should I just go about collecting rocks by hand, and using a small spade to dig up weeds?

Photos: imgur.com/a/3dRrQex

looksee

Its true you do not have a lot of grass there, what you mainly have is clover which is common enough in lawns, whether you want it or not is up to you. You do have a lot of stones and I would guess there is all sorts of rubbish under the surface of the grass which is why the grass has died. I would guess you do not have any topsoil, so you may have to bring some in.

I am not sure why you are so surprised you had to get a lawnmower to cut the grass, this is normal procedure! If you have a lawn you will be cutting it every week in the summer, and occasionally in the spring and autumn.

The fact that the ground slopes down is just the shape of the ground - provided it does not get boggy at the bottom of the slope it is not a problem.

There are a number of ways you could tackle this.

You could rake up all the surface stones and remove them. It would probably be worthwhile digging over the garden and getting out any other buried rubbish and the clover, then raking it flat/level and re-seeding it. I don't think it would be practical to rake it level, you are unlikely to have enough depth of soil to fill the bottom end and you would be covering the ends of the fencing so it would rot.

You could abandon the idea of grass and put down synthetic grass - you would probably still need to take out the surface stones, probably better to get it done professionally.

You could decide how much of it you want under paving then decide what you want to do with the rest of it.

The most immediate solution would be to take out the surface stones, rake over the surface of the ground to scarify it - create an environment for grass to grow then sow seed, water it and hope for the best. Ignore the clover. It all depends on how much work you want, what you want to spend and what result you want.

magicbastarder

if it's a new build, it's quite likely the soil is poor and compacted. seems to be more clover than grass that you have there, which would seem to suggest this. don't think of clover as a weed, though, it actually adds nitrogen to the soil, which is a good thing; but one thing to consider would be getting a bag or two of topsoil or soil improver and rotovating it in.

kma1987

Thanks looksee. I will look into getting a nice rake and seeds.

kma1987

Thanks for the suggestion, magicbastarder. I wouldn't mind topping up with some better soil, but I wouldn't have specialised equipment like rotovator to help here, and I guess renting is out of the question right now.