tips on removing lawn ?

Hi, I'm new to gardening and wanted to know what to do to basically make my old uneven bad condition lawn into a bedding area for nice plants ! Do I just remove the top layer of lawn( how deep ) and get planting ? Would really appreciate some tips , Cheers !

 

Hi Matt, welcome. I did this three years ago. I did not even lift the turf. I just dug it in. Its super now.

I started my whole garden from scratch, having never gardened before. The first thing to do is some research - as you are doing. I am on heavy clay, so the priority was to improve the soil. I added a large amount of 10 ml gravel and sharp sand (both from a builders merchant - several tons), I also added bales of multi purpose compost, and loads of mushroom compost. Whatever your soil type, you need as much organic material as you can get, and now is the ideal time to add it. I spread the material on top of the soil and then mixed it in by digging quite deeply. Exactly what type of organic material you use does not matter - just what is cheap and available. That is why I was happy to dig in the turf. With the addition of all this material it raised the level of the bed a bit. So I edged it with log roll, leaving the bed part a bit raised. Part of the area I covered in weed supressant fabric and then covered in gravel, to be the path/non bed area.

I left the bed fallow for a while, whilst continuing to dig it and hoe it. This helped to break up the old turf, and also got rid of any perennial weeds.

 

Thanks peter , I never knew you could just dig the turf in , will save me some time and energy anyway. it just seems a very daunting task to undertake ! I'm not in a hurry so I can do it properly and as our garden is 100ft long(overlooking the 3 Arrows in Boroughbridge) I'll only be doing part of it ! Thanks again , I'm off to do some digging !