How Do I Tackle This?

Zak Flaps

Hi.

I have an area at the bottom of the garden with paving and some small stones/pebbles. There is a lot of grass and some weeds growing through the stones. See photos below.







Last week I threw some Roundup on it to get it started. I'm not sure if I should pull the grass up or just take all the stones and grass/weeds up and start from scratch. Any advice?

New Home

It might be easier to rake up and remove all the pebbles, then start with a clean slate - it'd be much easier to dig through it, too. I had something similar in my front garden's flowerbed, but there was a weed-proof membrane (or whatever it's called) under the pebbles.

looksee

I have a similar area to sort and will be doing as NewHome is suggesting, weedkill, scrape clean, level, put back pebbles and extra on top. Very mixed feelings about membrane. Hopeless on beds, but on that kind of an area there is something to be said for it. Don't buy the cheapest, get a decent quality professional quality - some weeds will just grow through the cheap stuff. Ideally you would dig out six inches or so and replace with hard core, and beat it down. I will not be doing that but it does get the best results.