Before laying a new lawn

Hi There,

I am about to lay a new back lawn and i was wondering what i would need to do to prepare the site. The garden that was there when we moved in had very little grass and plenty of really strong weeds. Today i went out and dug up all the weeds with a pick axe (yes they were that strong) and i am left with a garden which looks quite bumpy with patches of grass. I was told by the guy who layed my slabs that i could buy some kind of black weed control plastic and just lay it over my existing garden and put new top soil on this before laying my turves. Would anyone know if this is a good idea or should i spray the garden and then put new top soil down without the weed control plastic? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

Membrane is a terrible idea IMO, it will cause numerouse problems used as described and wont actually stop any weeds.

What i sudgest you do is spray the old lawn off with roundup, leave for a fortnight then run a cultivater over the site, rake out the humps etc and spread fresh top soil.

Personally for lawn creation I often use a excavtor to level out and compact but it takes skill or youll end up with more of a mess than you started with.

 

Hi Scott,

just give it a dose of roundup, I used the sheeting earlier on this year and its been nothing but a pain in the backside since, first a pain to lay out, then a pain to keep down-that plus expense its just not worth the trouble.


I hope it helps,

 

Sounds like you will find the ground rock-hard when you try to cultivate, so get a self-propeller cultivator, rather than just a Merry-tiller type.

 

Hi Folks,

Just to let you know i bit the dust and dug my whole garden with a pick axe and removed about 40 rubble bags full of weeds and stones. I layed black anti weed material and put down 4 tonnes of new top soil today and have my turf coming next Saturday morning. Hopefully all will be well after this. Thanks for your original replies.

 

I dont know why i bothered giving you my time typing out the corect method to go about it.

 

So that others may be warned...