How to remove a lawn

graham.a.rowe05962 · November 2023

Hi

Please can someone advise how to remove a lawn. I want to change my garden into a wildlife garden and remove the lawn. Its a big lawn, so I'd prefer not to have to dispose of a large amount of soil to then have to buy soil in. I'd like to do the prep now for spring planting.

What would be the most effective solution to killing off the grass? Would turning it upside down kill the grass?

Mrs-B3-Southampton,-Hants · November 2023

If it's in good nick then hire one of those machines that strip turf. Maybe you could sell it!

StephenSouthwest · November 2023

Ecologically, it might be more appropriate to think about creating things, rather than about getting rid of things, as the process of supporting the change to a wildlife garden going forward. Your lawn will have enormous amounts of tiny wildlife living at and below the surface...

Garden soil is not primarily a substance, it is a layered ecologically rich set of relationships between many different types of living organisms and the humus, water, air and minerals they live in...

Having pontificated all that, I'd be tempted to rotovate, and then sow and plant...

robairdmacraignil · November 2023

No dig method for changing away from lawn would be to simply cover it with a thick enough layer of organic material so it dies off while the material you cover it with breaks down and gives you a fertile area for planting with something else. Cardboard can be used with some compost on top or if you have sufficient material just a thick enough layer can work. What you are left with may be too fertile for some wildflowers which often prefer low nutrient conditions. Here I posted a few videos where I tracked the progress of changing part of a lawn to a vegetable plot using used horse bedding /manure which I have easy access to and here I more recently posted a video showing where I used some cardboard to help the process on another area to plant up for next year.

Happy gardening!

Fairygirl · November 2023

I agree with @pansyface. There's a current trend that suggests grass should all be left long, or removed altogether, but that also eliminates many creatures/birds that need short grass. If the lawn's big, you can have both scenarios. It isn't an 'either, or' situation - wildlife of all kinds need varying sites and conditions.

You also wouldn't need to bring soil in. Yellow rattle, as she says, helps to inhibit grass, allowing other suitable plants to thrive in poorer soil, if you're looking for a meadow type of effect. Depending on where you're located, physically planting plugs or small plants is often more successful than sowing seed.
Many plants are excellent for wildlife though, so it really depends on whether you want a meadow, or just an area of varied planting. They aren't necessarily the same thing

JennyJ · November 2023

Wildlife will be happy if you leave most of it alone and let plants come in as they will. You might not be happy with that kind of look though. It really depends what you want to achieve - "wildlife garden" could be anything from a fairly conventional garden with cultivated lawn, shrubs, perennials etc but not using pesticides, weedkillers etc right up to completely left for nature to take over. In reality I guess you're looking for something in between. There's certainly no need to chuck out your soil and bring in more.

fidgetbones · November 2023

I would use a turf stripper if a big lawn. Stack the turves somewhere out of the way, upside down, and cover with black plastic. It will rot down to give a fabulous loam to use for topping off borders or veg patch or even use as potting soil. That should then give an impoverished subsoil to grow wild flower seed on.

graham.a.rowe05962 · November 2023

robairdmacraignil said:

No dig method for changing away from lawn would be to simply cover it with a thick enough layer of organic material so it dies off while the material you cover it with breaks down and gives you a fertile area for planting with something else. Cardboard can be used with some compost on top or if you have sufficient material just a thick enough layer can work. What you are left with may be too fertile for some wildflowers which often prefer low nutrient conditions. Here I posted a few videos where I tracked the progress of changing part of a lawn to a vegetable plot using used horse bedding /manure which I have easy access to and here I more recently posted a video showing where I used some cardboard to help the process on another area to plant up for next year.

Happy gardening!

Thank you, I've looked at your vids.

How long does it take to kill off the grass, would it be ready by spring?

graham.a.rowe05962 · November 2023

pansyface said:

Why do you exclude grass from your concept of a wildlife garden?

If you sow yellow rattle seeds in the lawn and then just leave things to grow you will end up with a very nice wildlife meadow that only needs cutting once a year.

The yellow rattle is a parasite which hinders the growth of grass and encourages the growth of wild flowers.

Like this, my lawn turned wildlife meadow.

Looks good, I'm a little worried about that taking over.

What I'm looking to do is put in a pond (bottom right), next to that have some wildflowers near a tree. centrally have a walkway and then effectively have the garden in 4 quarters, with different habitats.

graham.a.rowe05962 · November 2023

pansyface said:

It doesn’t take over. If it were to show signs of growing too tall, you could just strim it. But it doesn’t. The yellow rattle is a very effective grass controller.

We found that you could make non slip paths in the grass by using those plastic units that are designed to take cars parked on grass. They lock together and can be mown over.

Good luck.

I don't want the whole garden to be wildflower. I'm trying to have different habitats for different creatures. So putting yellow rattle will that take over the whole of the grass area, as it's invasive?

robairdmacraignil · November 2023

graham.a.rowe05962 said:

Thank you, I've looked at your vids.

How long does it take to kill off the grass, would it be ready by spring?

I think grass being killed off depends on the type of grass in the lawn. If you have scutch grass in there it can spread by white sideways growing shoots so is particularly hard to kill off by no dig methods as it has the ability to shoot through any gaps in the mulch and grow a significant distance to find light when covered. I have this in areas and find it growing up at the edges of the no dig area even if it can't get directly up through the mulch.

Some plants will be happy to grow initially in the mulch material and so you can plant these before the cardboard is even broken down underneath. I used potatoes as one of the crops that helped get the area ready for further cultivation as they are happy to grow in high nutrient conditions in the mulch material I had to use and compete well with other plants that might otherwise have survived the mulching process. Mulching now would leave the are ready for a potato crop in spring with more mulch added to help "earth up" the potatoes to get a better crop and once these were harvested I'd expect the area to be fairly weed free and ready for a variety of other uses.

All the best!

How to remove a lawn

Posts