Starting a fresh with good foundations

Esther89 · June 2022

I have recently bough my first house and garden. The house is on a hill, and the garden has been levelled, and is completely covered with fake grass.
We've removed a section to start planting a border, but it looks like there is lots of concrete slabs and builders rubble buried underneath. Which I assume they did to reduce the amount of soil they would need to level off the garden.

We've just had a new fence installed, with concrete gravel boards. Which have been partially sunk into the ground. Hopefully this will keep the garden in place.

My question is, how much of this shall I remove? is it best to remove all the concrete, and replace it with soil? Or will the concrete create firmer ground? What is everyones thought on this?

AnniD · June 2022

Hello Esther, if you could post a couple of photos it might help with giving advice

I think generally speaking it would be best to remove all the concrete by the sounds of it, but others may think differently.

Fairygirl · June 2022

Plants certainly wont grow in concrete, so you'll need to remove most of it. What you intend planting, and how much rubbish and concrete is actually there, will determine how you proceed.
The other alternative is to create raised beds, but you'll need to take out enough concrete to ensure adequate drainage, and the bottom of them would need lined to prevent soil just washing through into the rubble etc below

Photos will help.

Starting a fresh with good foundations

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