Laying turf lawn

what_claire · May 2022

Hi. I've had an artifical lawn in my back garden for 2 years and want to change to grass. I have 2 dogs who use it as dog toilet and the maintenance is too much to keep up to. I gave 2 young children and want them to be able to play . Cutting grass is easier than disinfecting and powerhosing. Also, last summer is stank, to me of dog pee.
ANYWAY..
After removing the artificial stuff, underneath there is a good 6 inches of stones and concrete, laid on top of previous lawn, which is rotting away.
QUESTION
How much do I need to take away?
Just the concrete, rubble and stones or also the rotten lawn?
I plan to put down a mix of topsoil, compost and manure the turf. Any other advice?

KT53 · May 2022

Just remove all the rubbish which was laid over the old lawn. I would just use topsoil to get the level to where you need it, unless you have compost and manure you want/need to use up.

what_claire · May 2022

Thanks - that's what I thought. Still much more time consuming than I thought, but seems like 90% of gardening jobs are like that

Fairygirl · May 2022

A proper lawn will be much more beneficial - and will smell far better

As @KT53 says - once you've removed the rubble and base that was there, it won't be a particularly difficult job to prep it for turf. The old turf will be fine as a base for some soil/compost. If you can spike it a bit, that could be helpful as it's probably very compacted.
Unfortunately, the problem with artificial turf is - [apart from the obvious one] it isn't as low maintenance as people believe. There's a house near me which has a fairly large area of it. It's chock full of weeds. There's no easy way of removing those, apart from weedkiller.

Laying turf lawn

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