My garden is a bit of a boggy mess and I want to sort it out
it's clay soil so my plan was to remove 4 inches of soil and replace with good topsoil but what should I use - grass seeds or turf?
or should I just astro turf it?
we have a dog as well so whatever goes down need to be as dog proof as possible.
Following - we have a 2mx3m square of grass (or rather mud and moss) that's perpetually in the shade and looks a state too!
First question - do you actually need a lawn of any kind? I know it's a British obsession but if it's not a large space then for a 'boggy mess' + dog there are probably lower maintenance options that will let you use the garden more reliably throughout the year.
Unless she's reallyskinny 4 inches won't be anything like enough
Anything but astro-turf. It looks rubbish and will end up in land-fill in a few years.
If not too big an area - weed-proof membrane and some nice gravel perhaps? Our dog runs around on ours but a quick rake over and it looks fine again.
Anything but astro-turf
This. Environmental disaster in every sense.
It's not a big garden and like scruff's it's mainly in the shade.
It doesn't have to be grass , I just want it not to look nice
My mother was recently warned off astroturf because she has a dog; apparently it gets extremely hot under the summer sun.
Ok so everyone seems to be fairly against astro so I will discount that
so grass , turf or Other ?
Check out The Grass People. Our weedy moss area under the trees and shaded by the patio turned into a reasonable lawn after overseeding with their shade* loving seed.
*the stuff from B&Q and garden centres never did a thing
Same situation here, large-ish area, heavy clay soil, all winter it's a boggy mess, meaning the lawn slowly dies between December and March - until it's starts drying out.
I get it back again between now and summer with a lot of work.
I'm contempalted alternatives, NOT astro
I’ll go with astroturf. Child’s, dogs and not enough time to keep a lawn nice it’s been revolutionary. When I retire I’ll go back to a really nice lawn but as things stand I wouldn’t contemplate real grass, or in winter just a great big bath, for a moment.
NB it does get warm in the sun but has not caused any issues for our dogs over the last 4 years.
2nd Grass People - great seed. Got mine through Amazon, don't know if they sell elsewhere too. Lots of mixes to choose from.
Watching with interest too.
How much topsoil do you think is needed genreally for a good lawn?
My garden is north facing but partly sunny. However i live right by the sea - It's block pavers at the moment and judging by the poor state/and or amount of maintenance of the neighbours lawns i was considering astro but obviously would much prefer the real thing.
Thinking theres mostly rubble from the extension under the block pavers so i guess would have to take out a fair bit to make way for the top soil. its about 7X10
Assume id have to keep the kids off it for a while if i seeded it?
Our upper lawn is one patio slab-and-a-bit deep top soil with turf on top of that. It dries in hot summer weather but survives light use. Basically just lifted one half of a big patio, cleared the slabs and the muck they were stuck with and filled with soil until level with the other slabs when trodden down and slapped some turf on top.
It was a quick fit as we were hosting a Christening and needed some grass for the babies to crawl around on. Fully expected it to die that year but the 'baby' is now 19 and living in New Zealand while our grass is also about 19 and hasn't left home yet.
Why is it boggy? Before you do anything id be looking at drainage.
Some pipes with lots holes taking excess water away from the area and lots of gravel etc as a base layer.
Can you divert the water to a drain?
Short version: Don't rule out astro turf.
Long version:
We have a north facing garden and are surrounded by trees, when we moved in 9 years ago the garden was all moss, laurel bushes, and bamboo and it was a right mess. 7 years ago we ripped out all of the bamboo and laurel, put down a patio and had it turfed. It looked lovely that summer but has never been the same since.
Two kids who play football day and night, and two dogs who chase anything that moves, combined with lots of shade, acidic pine needles, berries, catkins, squirrels burying acorns, and trees sucking every drop of water from the soil (until it rains heavily and they can't keep up) means a muddy lawn at best, a bog at worst. The loose soil gets walked into the house so then the house is always dirty.
Since the turf died I have spent hundreds of pounds each year on god knows how many sacks of seed (good seed from well regarded suppliers), along with gadgets for aerating and wotnot, and still we have a muddy mess.
When we started on this journey my mum laughed at me and said get astroturf, I refused for all the reasons stated above and because I love to feel grass under bare feet. 7 years and a lot of wasted money and effort and I am now seriously contemplating astro. 90% of people I speak to who have put it down (and have dogs and children) rate it very highly.
There is enough plastic in the environment already, so IMO, plastic grass is a bad thing. However, I have a big petrol driven mower which keeps people from talking to me for 45mins every week or two. Lovely times.
Get astroturf.
In fact get Chinese astroturf.
Stuff the insects that live in the grass & stuff the environment.
At least you’ll save power by not having to cut it so that’s a bonus.
Our neighbours - two small kids and a west-highland terrier - just replaced their Somme-replica mud-bath with plastro-turf, which I hate for any number of reasons. It looks hideous in that bright artificial grass way and actually twinkles in the morning sun, which is gross. However it arguably looks better than the dog-churned mud patch, the kids seem to love it - lots of screaming - and the dog is still trying, erm, doggedly to dig holes in it.
Personally I think it's horrific and would have looked for an alternative. I can see why they've done it, but you might as well just put a brightly-coloured carpet down.
What other species would deliberately use up a finite fossil resource to replace a natural, living plant habitat that provides a home for insects, worms etc and allows birds to feed. It pretty much sums up everything that's wrong with us.
Do you have to have 'grass'?
I find reading these sort of threads interesting. I've been a professional horticulturalist my whole life so understand soils and plants pretty well.
I'm sure I exasperate my customers sometimes when I try to explain why their half-arsed ideas won't work and insist that if they want a decent end product then they need to put in the initial work.
Plants need a suitable environment to grow in. Grass evolved to live on open plains where grazing kept competing species at bay. Thus it's optimised for full sun. Yes there are genus such as fescues that will cope with less sun but they are more susceptible to damage.
Again the soil of a grassland is open and friable after centuries of decomposition of the old stems builds up a thick layer of well aerated material.
To create a nice lawn you need to create a decent environment for the roots and enough light for the leaves. If you can't achieve that then a hard surface, bark chip or gravel can work.
I hate artificial grass with a passion. Plastic has no place in a garden.
Oh and in answer to your original question. I usually choose to seed rather than turf if possible. I think each plantlet gets the best chance in life if it can put its roots down through fissures in the soil from the off. I've done a couple of trials too which support my theory.
We spent a long time returfing / reseeding our tiny garden before we admitted defeat and went for artificial grass.
The combination of kids and dogs just meant we were living with a permanent mud bath in the garden and through the house a lot of the time as well.
Anyone going for artificial grass needs to plan on doing a bit more prep if dogs will be using it - failure to install it properly can quite quickly result in a stinking mess - particularly in summer.
There’s good advice online but the basics of construction are:
- dig out soil to 15-20cm
- install weed net layer
- lay granite* chippings (12 cm+) and compact with a compactor
- lay weed net layer - don’t use absorbant types though
- lay granite* dust / granite layer (5 cm+) and compact with a compactor
- dust the grano dust with zeofill* 20kg per m2 or something like that
- lay, join and fix the artificial grass
- spinkle zeofill* over the artificial grass instead of sand to weigh it down (5-10kg per m2)
* these steps are critical. If you use limestone and / or don’t use zeofill, dog wee basically stinks to high heaven and you’ll be throwing the “grass” out in a year or two.
Doing it properly adds a good bit to the cost and I found it really hard getting a supply of granite chippings - a lot of the blended aggregates has limestone it it which basically soaks up the dog wee and enables the stink to happen.
For the grass, we went with neograss and it’s been great. It’s not hot in summer and very few visitors even notice it’s not real grass. We clean it with hot water and a grass cleaning solution after any dog poo just to ensure there are no issues with kids and faecal matter.
One thing I would also say is that doing it yourself is seriously hard work.
I dug the existing garden out and then brought all of the materials in through the house (no rear access) in a wheelbarrow. I think it amounted to around 400 barrow loads of soil out / aggregate in.
The result has been great. A couple of summers of really enjoying the garden. No “stink” from dog wee and although we were gutted we couldn’t get a lawn to last it’s probably going to do us for the next 10 years at least.
At this time of year I'd be looking at turf (especially given the base you have to work with). If you put down topsoil and seed you won't be able to go out in it this year (you should have done it last autumn so the seeds could root overwinter and start to appear as soon as it gets warm this year). If you put down turf it should be good to walk on after three or four weeks. Make sure you get turf suitable for your circumstances (ie, if it is shady get turf for shady areas)
