Lawn help! Plus lawning over a old pebble driveway.. what to do ?

Hello,


I am very new to gardening. I don't have a clue what I am doing but I have being trying to read up on Google / watch videos on how to do things. It's still not helped though.

Im 29 and physically fit. I live on my own in Billingham which is in the north east. I I have owned my house for about a year. My garden has clay soil which is full of pebbles I'm not sure if these pebbles are natural or not because the last owner of this house made the back garden split in two. On one side of the garden he had lawn and on the other side of the garden he made a pebble driveway and put a small 2 foot wall all of bricks in between.

I have noticed when I have been trying to turn up the clay soil that the pebbles in the clay soil are exactly like the pebbles on the pebble driveway.

I I have knocked down the wall all in the back garden and I've started to get rid of the pebbles from the pebble driveway as I would like one large lawn. However underneath the pebbles in the driveway part I've noticed that the last owner had filled the area with sand at least 3 inches deep. Due to this I'm not quite sure what to do do my plan was to lay turf all over the garden. One of my questions is would I be better removing all the sand and then putting compost and topsoil everywhere before laying the the turf. Or can I keep the Sand there and just put topsoil on top of it and then lay the turf?

the other side of my garden is not in good condition the lawn is full of moss and weeds and is old and dried out and patchy. I was also planning on replacing this too and then leveling out the hall garden as the garden is extremely uneven as it is. This will be a hard job as I do not have a rotavator but was planning on doing it with a spade I know it will take longer but I don't mind as I'm I'm going to have a lot of time on my own now after I finish work because of self isolation and it gives me something to do.would you recommend me to do this or do you think I could just mess it all up.

 

Welcome Dannii. I replied on the link below before I saw this thread.

Clay soil and general advice