First shot at a new lawn

Hi guys,

I have a new build with a fairly big garden, I have already built some decking and started on a gravel border and now I want to seed the garden.

Before we moved in, the house builder put about 100mm of sand across the whole garden. The garden drains fine but I'd like to change the levels a little as the garden is kind of low in one corner.

Today I had a shot of an old Briggs and Stratton tiller but all it really did was till the sand; occasionally, where there was less sand, it would churn up rocks.

What should I do about all the sand? Is there too much of it to add topsoil and compost?

Pics of the garden after tilling:






All help would be much appreciated. Cheers

 

It doesn't look bad to me. How deep did the rotavator blades penetrate? 20-30 cm is enough. Remove the larger pieces of stone and hardcore and you should be fine. It is a good time of year to sow grass seed but if the weather is very dry you will need to water it regularly for the first five or six weeks or so.

 

Cheers for the advice. I think its worse than it looks. Some areas are just pure sand and then compacted soil underneath.

The tiller only got 100mm, 150mm at the most where the ground was already loose from weeding.

I assume I'll need topsoil on top of this lot?

 

Another pass with the rotavator and it will go a little deeper, hopefully. Topsoil is very expensive. I would try to get 20-30 cm of friable soil and it should be ok unless you are in an area that is very wet holds standing water.

 

I think I'll rent a med sized rotivator for a day. Just to make sure I get the depth.

Our plot is one of the highest and the garden drains well to the back rhs corner, havent had any standing water so far and there has been some pretty heavy rain (central Scotland).

 

Another pic of an area with pure sand and then clay underneath

 

Looking at that last picture, it does look very sandy indeed. The rotavator will help mix the sand and clay if it isn't too deep but it looks to me like it needs organic matter. Can you get a load of manure? That really would be the best thing in my opinion and improve the fertility.

 

Its not like that everywhere but more so towards the rear of the garden.

Yeah I'm sure I can. Would I just rotavate that in or rake it in after rotavation?

 

Rotavate it in.