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New-ish build disaster
Pyra
Posts: 152
Hello, any advice would be appreciated on this. Sorry for the essay.
I moved into my newish build (about 10 years old) in November. I'm only really now getting round to doing something about the garden. I actually have a fairly sizeable garden for a newer build, about 5 metres by 7 metres for the front, north facing, and 12 metres by 10 at the back, south facing. All that's at the front is a sad looking pieris and a dead ornamental tree, which I took out. And the back has 2 fruit trees in raised beds and the pots I brought from the last place. My plan was to remove the grass at the front, put down a hedge, and turn the rest over to wildlife friendly bushes and shrubs, which some climbing roses up the front of the house. At the back I was going to put down some more fruit trees and dig out flowerbeds for sun-loving pollinator plants.
Then I started digging.
I was expecting bad soil, what with the age of the house. But hooolllleeeyyyy heck! It's so bad. I've been digging a trench at the front for the hedge, and I've pulled out bricks, stones bigger than my head, plastic bags, and so, so much cement. Basically if you dig down more than an inch, it turns into a rubbish dump. The soil is thick, heavy clay as well, so anything I try and plant will have terrible drainage. On top of that there appears to be some sort of weed suppression fabric under only part of the grass, which hasn't worked at all. It's been over a week digging a trench and I'm now having to go find a sledge hammer to break up the congealed mass of concrete and clay that's stopping me going any further.
Any ideas for how to improve this would be appreciated. I've ordered plants for the hedge (ordered before I started digging and I can't cancel the order now) and sand and compost for them. I also have mulch and a load of newspaper, so I was going to cover the front lawn in that and leave it until next spring. People keep suggesting weed suppressant fabric under the mulch instead of newspaper, but I've never found it to be that effective, and using it means I'll have to pull it up later, since it's clear I can't plant anything without digging out a large amount of 'soil' (clay and cement!). Is weed suppression fabric really better? And is the only option for improving the soil just to pull it up and replace it with compost?
Thanks for reading this far! Any help would be appreciated.
I moved into my newish build (about 10 years old) in November. I'm only really now getting round to doing something about the garden. I actually have a fairly sizeable garden for a newer build, about 5 metres by 7 metres for the front, north facing, and 12 metres by 10 at the back, south facing. All that's at the front is a sad looking pieris and a dead ornamental tree, which I took out. And the back has 2 fruit trees in raised beds and the pots I brought from the last place. My plan was to remove the grass at the front, put down a hedge, and turn the rest over to wildlife friendly bushes and shrubs, which some climbing roses up the front of the house. At the back I was going to put down some more fruit trees and dig out flowerbeds for sun-loving pollinator plants.
Then I started digging.
I was expecting bad soil, what with the age of the house. But hooolllleeeyyyy heck! It's so bad. I've been digging a trench at the front for the hedge, and I've pulled out bricks, stones bigger than my head, plastic bags, and so, so much cement. Basically if you dig down more than an inch, it turns into a rubbish dump. The soil is thick, heavy clay as well, so anything I try and plant will have terrible drainage. On top of that there appears to be some sort of weed suppression fabric under only part of the grass, which hasn't worked at all. It's been over a week digging a trench and I'm now having to go find a sledge hammer to break up the congealed mass of concrete and clay that's stopping me going any further.
Any ideas for how to improve this would be appreciated. I've ordered plants for the hedge (ordered before I started digging and I can't cancel the order now) and sand and compost for them. I also have mulch and a load of newspaper, so I was going to cover the front lawn in that and leave it until next spring. People keep suggesting weed suppressant fabric under the mulch instead of newspaper, but I've never found it to be that effective, and using it means I'll have to pull it up later, since it's clear I can't plant anything without digging out a large amount of 'soil' (clay and cement!). Is weed suppression fabric really better? And is the only option for improving the soil just to pull it up and replace it with compost?
Thanks for reading this far! Any help would be appreciated.
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Posts
we moved to a new build 6 years ago and started back garden first which we got company to put down a curved patio
after that we started making borders around all garden
it so a nitemare the soil was awful it took over a week of very hard work with my hubby and brother actually digging the soil with axe 🙈🙈they pulled out stones as big as my head
we add lot compost and mixed it together and got there in time as like you we had ordered plants before we knew what soil was like
now I’ve got soil the way we like it but definitely lot hard work