Complete beginner: Converting a Pebble Garden into a Lawn.

Hello all!

After 5 years of minimal garden maintenance with the lockdown period we’ve being doing heavy duty repairs/updates.

The final challenge is to convert the bulk of the garden area filled with stones into a lawn, it’s roughly 6m x 5m. Never embarked on anything like this so trying to gather info and advice before we start.



My understanding is I need to go through these steps. But any more detail, red herrings to consider or things I’ve missed much appreciated. Also best way to collect, bag and get rid of a lot of stones..!

Basic issues/steps are?:
- remove all the stones (my poor back)
- remove and kill weeds
- treat soil? There’s a lot of weeds and old grass strains that come through annually.
- turn over soil?
- do we need to lay more top soil? then treat or flatten out?
- buy turf (whats the right one to get?)
- lay it... guess we'll figure that out!
- when’s the best time to lay turf? Can we do it in the next few weeks and have a lawn for summer?

Any tips welcome. Start of a long and exciting journey!

 

@SSC

 

I'd spray them with Glyphosate based weedkiller, if you are not adverse to that sort of thing. Do that before you disturb any of them (otherwise bits of roots that break off live weeds will come back again).

You might want to leave it a bit longer before doing that to allow more weeds to come up ... or, better still, spray now and again in a fortnight - that will also catch anything you missed the first time.

Yes, you need a good seedbed. I would hire a rotavator for the weekend or, better still, find a mate who has one and buy then a crate of beer. Much better they do it, they will be familiar with how to manhandle it. If no such mate advertise on EBay - or Match.COM maybe? for "My ideal mate is good with a rotavator and likes beer"

If the ground is rock hard, or compacted, it will need rough digging before rotavating, unless you can get a mini tractor with PTO rotavator in there. If you can hire one of those, no skill required, so forget about Match.COM

If it was soil before then probably not ... if it was path / hardcore etc then probably yes.

Yes, Once rotavated work it as level as you can (with a rake usually). Then to get it level over a large area I would drag a ladder over it. Tie a rope to each end of the ladder and drag it front-to-back and left-to-right like a carthorse

Put some blocks / weights on the ladder so that it "grabs" plenty of soil, reduce the weight bit by bit until it pretty much skates over the surface. You should have a nice, level, seed bed by then.

I hate turf. Expensive, and terrible ecologically - an inch of the best topsoil scraped off a Fenland field every other year and transported half way across the country.

I would sow seed. Slightly better in the Autumn, but only because in the spring the weeds get cracking at the same time as you sow the seed. With Turf you probably only have Hobson's choice for variety, with seed you can get whatever you like - Bowling green, Kids football pitch, Shady mix, or bog-standard-regular-lawn mix. Or some-and-some if you have a shady area,or you want a rougher bit for the kids' kick-about.

Preparation for a lawn is the same whether you do Turf or Seed.

I did a Google - I only took the very first one that came up so better prices out there.

Budget Turf £2.75 sq.m..
Seed says "Sow at 25-50 grams per sq/m "
2kg (40 sq.m.) is £13 = 33p / sq.m
5kg (100 sq.m.) is £23 = 23p per sq.m.

Any time, but you will have to water it without fail at least once a day for two months and not miss any bits if you do it in Summer. If you did it now then maybe twice a week would be enough ... note that watering all of it and not missing any bits will involve moving the Sprinkler after 30 minutes or so until all the area is watered. Same for seed, but less often.

Seed will need watering through any dry spells in the first Summer too. Get yourself a good oscillating sprinkler and hose etc.

 

This is the sort of mini Tractor PTO Rotavator I was thinking of. Sorry, lousy photo



and here is the "after" 9 years later

 

Thanks so much for that. All useful

Think we need to asses strategy, after a couple of days pruning, trimming and clearing out junk (see the big white bags!) we’ve been trying to start on the stones but think it’ll be nearly
impossible for us to do manually.




The garden space is pretty vast and the stones are quite thickly laid and run quite deep.

What are our alternatives? Surely professionals who do this but likely expensive? Would people really come and collect for free?

Either way we’re not going to be able to do either during lockdown so I can try and do an hour a day and see where I get. Does this stuff sell for much if it’s bagged (with some twigs etc. included)

Sorry for all the questions but just trying to get a sense of the possible vs the realistic!

 

More stony than I thought! A fine rake is the best thing to "drag" them to one side, and then collect them. You could sieve them to separate the "fines" out of the stones. Rather than looking to sell them (although that's fine ...) I'd be looking to reuse them - perhaps as a drainage trench, if you have any problems with surface water.

I would kill the weeds first (chemically) and then rake off what stones you can. If you disturb the weeds before killing them they will regrow - the chemical needs all the top green part to still be attached to all the roots in order to work effectively, so don't disturb the weeds at all until they are dead

Then rotavate, then in the course of making the seed bed rake more stones off again.

Needs to be a "seed rake" - with rigid tines (close enough together so the stones don't slip through)


and not a Springbok

 

Our garden was similar when we loved in five years ago. To be honest we did all the back-breaking work in February when it was cooler. We had pebbles and rocks as well as stones (previous owners liked conifers and had dogs who had evidently peed all over any lawn and killed it)

anyhow, we removed about 30 bags of stones mixed with weeds and a bit of poor topsoil. By hands. It was awful hard work but we just couldn’t have planted anything in it.

we then left it a few weeks to let weeds germinate so we could spot them and remove.

Then we got someone in to lay turf. It wasn’t totally a success but five years later we do have a rather weedy lawn.

don’t expect get a perfect result and remember a good lawn needs very frequent attention.

 

PS you can’t sell the rubble mess,you remove, in fact at many public tips you have to pay to dump stones like this.

 

I wonder if a rake will move them (to one side), or if they will just slip through.

I don't think they are a problem in the soil (although stones have a habit of working their way to the surface over time), but the ones on the surface will get in the way of the grass.

If the soil was prep'd, as is, into a flat seed bed - stones and all - maybe topsoil could be spread on top for a stone-free seedbed. Trouble is, to get the topsoil down, would need barrowing it here-and-there, and the barrow wheel and foot traffic would compact the seedbed. Maybe the topsoil-over-everything would solve that

I wonder what others think?

How about astroturf instead? A layer of sad to get everything level, then Astroturf

 

I think a layer of topsoil would help level off the ground, especially if effort was first made to remove significant weeds and turn over the soil/remove some of the stones. Grass likes to put down deep roots, doesn't it?

Astroturf - hmmm, for me it's a "no" here. Ecologically it's much better to have a lawn, with insects and birds. Even if that lawn is full of weeds and looks shabby. I always remember watching my daughter's nursery vacuuming their artificial lawn every Friday, as it just clogged up and leaves and crumbs. If it gets dirty you end up buying cleaning fluid to clean it, then scrub it. No fun at all. I think it is one of those ideas that works best in a small area of very high traffic, but otherwise it's an expensive and pretty controversial solution (a lot of people would consider it a big negative if you sold the house).

 

I have no idea how the sums match up, but here are some alternative thoughts

I wonder how Astroturf compares to all the chemicals lavished on lawns, the selective weedkiller s like Clopyralid that persist through council composting and then kill plants when that compost is used - and those chemicals are going to kill a fair amount of wildlife too.

Then there is carbon footprint and pollution from the Petrol etc. used in mowers. And irrigation water, all cleaned up suitable for drinking (unfortunate that we have no grey water distribution in this country) ...

... and new lawns made from Turf which as I said above is an inch of best topsoil scraped off the top of the field every 2nd year and transported across the country. The transport is also true for Astroturf of course, albeit that it is lighter it has probably travelled further

Astroturf has to be laid on well compacted ground, which isn't good for habitat ... but where the ground is already compacted, previously "hard standing" or similar, then the alternative is a significant amount of "inputs" to convert it back to good quality soil to create a seedbed for a lawn. Might be better to leave it as it is and "cover it over" ...

Quality Astroturf will last 25 years ... that's a lot of Carbon in maintenance of a lawn.

I dunno know the answer, and easy to assume "black-is-white" if not careful!, but might be close to evens, especially where the starting point is "hard core base"

I'd much prefer a lawn ... but for newbuilds etc. the soil is often in shocking state and newbie owner have a miserable time trying to get the pile of rubbish the builders buried into a garden.

 

Not quite the same I have a stone covered garden and thought I w ould 'dig' it up for a veg patch.
so this is how far I've got there was about 5cm if bigger stones then 2_3 cm of smaller stones/ big grit and a bit of clay soil so I now have nearly a small square after lots of effort. underneath is some rather tough sticky clay.
Was going to fill with compost/ clay mix.
Do I need to dig the clay bottom after removing the remaining stones?
Shall I put the smaller stones in as a drainage layer?
Would it have better too make a container with an open bottom to the top stove layer? Didn't do this as I only have half a bag of compost at the moment.
I currently have lettuce cabbage and pea seedlings
Any ideas great as I'm another new gardener

 

I would be inclined to skim off the top couple of inches with a shovel and dump it. Then get some top soil sand mix and seed it. I think putting top soil over the top would cause issues later on with stones coming to the top and may cause injury or damage to mower when picked up by mower and thrown about. It will be hard work and lots of bags for tip. Not sure of budget, but may be worth looking at hiring a man with mini digger for the day. My father in law when he built his house in Ireland had a mini digger with a levelling attachment. Their plot was farm land and very poor he just used levelling part and pushed to few inches to one point and loaded into a trailer and sent to a building site who used it to level and fill ground before building houses.

Rusty

 

Hi all,

Checking in after a month and a making some progress. Whilst the pebbles and a lawn are the priority have also been doing a lot of decluttering and removal of unwanted plants/tree branches etc. Bought a proper pebble rake has been helpful but gathering pebbles is HARD work.

As you can see I have made progress and raked about 30/35% of the area now and before I get any further I have some questions:




- Raking and collecting all these stones is a lot of work physically. If I can get someone to do the job for me and take them away what would be a reasonable price? I have a quote but want to sense check.

- When considering laying down lawn. How rigorous do I need to be with removing the pebbles?

The layer is pretty thick and they penetrate down into the soil, trying to get rid of all the big ones within the soil layer will take me a . Obviously don't want to cut any corners but equally don't want to break my back and waste lots of time where not required.

Thanks.