How a lawn should look/feel

Hi guys,

im new to this forum and will confess i no nothing about gardening but i need some advice on my grass and figured this would be a great place to come.

the story may be very long but please bare with me.
Back in June 2013 we purchased a new home, at this time it was in the process of being built. We were informed by the builders that the garden would either be "tidied" or we could pay for them to cultivate and turf the garden.
We were due to move in in winter so opted to have the garden turfed to minimise mud and dirt. So in December last year we paid £400 for our garden which is 10x8m to be turfed.

We didnt pay much attention over the winter but once summer arrived we started spending more time in the garden and noticed that the ground was en even allover. The garden has a natural decline at the bottom and incline from one side fence to the other which we were informed of at the beginning of the sale. However when you walk across the grass its almost as though you can feel rocks and solic ground underneath. In parts your foot bends and wobbles where the ground isnt level like when your walking through the woods or up a bank where the ground wouldnt be even due to tree roots and things.

I will admitt i havnt looked after the lawn as much as maybe i should have but im not sure this would have made any difference.

I have been in touch with the company who built the house and who we paid to put the turf down and they have arranged for the gardener to come out. When he came out he said he would cut the grass with a roller lawn mower and that should flatten the ground. So he has been and in my honest opinion it hasnt made any difference.

So to my question, as im no expert and havnt had my own garden before ( im only 26 and this is our 1st home and my mam done all the gardening at home) i dont know whether what im describing is acceptable. My instinct says it isnt and that i should continue to question it but id like abit of knoweledge to back up my claim so they cant fob me off.

If you have stayed with me through all that thankyou and i hope someone can offer some help.

 

Welcome to GC Sheltux. Sorry to say we hear this so often about gardens of new build houses and it's not acceptable. Were you at the house when the garden was being prepared and turfed? So often the builders will dump or leave all kinds of rubbish in the gardens before they turf and I suspect this is what they've done with yours.

Try digging down a foot or so in one of the uneven patches to see what's underneath, if there is rubble then I'd call the builders back and ask them to start again, remove all the rubbish and re turf. Make sure somebody is there to see the job is done properly. Or ask for compensation and work on the garden yourself, at least you will know the job has been done properly. It would be a good idea to take photo's for evidence as they may try and deny it and you may have to take it further.

 

thanx for your reply.

i dont think they have prepared the ground properly but because we wernt actually living in the house when the turf was laid we dont no for certain. i have taken photos of an area where they had lay turf ontop of concrete where they had installed a wrong fence post. they have replaced this area today.

me and my mam dug a small semi circle at the bottom of the garden and put plants in it. so i imagine we dug about 10 inches and we retrieved empty concrete bags and bricks. i wish i had taken photos but at the time i didnt think. i have informed them of this also.

i think i will send in another complaint about it and either ask for them to relay the turf with the appropriate ground work and correct amount of top soil or i shall ask for my money back and get another company to do it for me.

fingers crossed i get somewhere with them

 

It sounds like you've already found the tell tale signs and the rest of the garden is likely to be the same unfortunately. If it is left like this you will never have a decent lawn, it will become patchy. Who ever does the work for you, either the building firm or someone else, make sure you have someone there overseeing what's done.

 

Thankyou so much for your replies and confirming what I thought was right