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Never done any gardening before advice needed.
tkettlewood
Posts: 5
Basically I've never done any gardening before in my life and my mum is saying she will pay me too so i thought why not. I am wondering what equipment i will need to use and the best way of laying down stones in our garden.
Is it best to dig up the grass which is currently there now?
Do i have to dig up the grass?
What equipment will i need?
I have watched some youtube videos and they do it in different ways my back garden is pretty big. atm i am just using a spade and have dug a small area but i am wondering if they are any shortcuts.
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Are they paving stones for a patio area? If so they will need some sort of stony or rubbly foundation to give them a more solid base than just earth. Or could they be for a path like stepping stones across a lawn? They will just need grass dug out so they are level with the grass for mowing over.
see wants a path in the middle of the garden and stones at either side so she can put flower pots (big ones) i think to fill it in sort of.
As BL has said, the paving would need a bit of turf taken out so that you can lay them to form the path. Depending on how solid the ground is, you may have to lay a bit of foundation under them, but if the ground's pretty solid and compacted, you could probably just lay them into the grass. Sometimes a layer of coarse sand is used to put them on, or a blob of mortar at each corner to stop them shifting.
For gravel, you don't need to do much, but I'd take the grass away so that you have enough depth to lay a good layer of gravel - you need a couple of inches (5 or 6 cm) to make it look decent, and it's best laid over a weed suppressing membrane if you want to put pots and containers on it. Gravel's cheaper bought in bulk, but it will depend what access you have fro a lorry getting it into the plot, or nearby so that you can barrow it. You'll probably need a couple of bulk bags - roughly a couple of tons.
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
When you say stones, do you mean small gravel stones or big paving stones? If gravel, I would spray the grass with weedkiller, then put down a weed supressant fabric that lets water through then the gravel. Weeds grow up through gravel otherwise.
My mum said something about buttercups can't be killed weedkiller or something. We've dugged half of the garden up now. Seems like a lot of work ha. We're going to put down both a path and stones at either side with plant pots with flowers in at either side of the stones as the path will be down the middle to the deck in.
Last edited: 22 May 2017 14:55:29
By stones do you mean gravel? If so, then as above, you need a weed suppressing membrane down first, then your gravel.
Yeah gravel shingles i think you call them measuring the garden now to buy membrane.