My front garden was like that but worse (new build - compressed building rubble directly underneath the turf). I am not very strong due to joints problems, and the 'soil' needed a pick to dig it, so rather than dig over the entire plot, I just dug large holes with the pick in the rubble exactly where I wanted my plants and filled the holes with good soil/compost mixtures. Every year I dug more and more holes, so now it is more 'hole' than original material.
I also mulched the whole area very very thickly every autumn, which brought in the worms. It looks like any other garden now, although I still have to be careful where I plant anything with heavy nutrient requirements.The mulching meant that I raised the soil level by several inches and had to put sleepers in to hold it all in place.
It has taken 4 years to fix, since scraping the turf off.
You could of course leave some unimproved areas if you want to plant wildflowers as they prefer poor soil.
Posts
My front garden was like that but worse (new build - compressed building rubble directly underneath the turf). I am not very strong due to joints problems, and the 'soil' needed a pick to dig it, so rather than dig over the entire plot, I just dug large holes with the pick in the rubble exactly where I wanted my plants and filled the holes with good soil/compost mixtures. Every year I dug more and more holes, so now it is more 'hole' than original material.
I also mulched the whole area very very thickly every autumn, which brought in the worms. It looks like any other garden now, although I still have to be careful where I plant anything with heavy nutrient requirements.The mulching meant that I raised the soil level by several inches and had to put sleepers in to hold it all in place.
It has taken 4 years to fix, since scraping the turf off.
You could of course leave some unimproved areas if you want to plant wildflowers as they prefer poor soil.