Hey hey ci siamo appena trasferiti questo fine settimana finalmente dopo mesi e mesi di avanti e indietro. Sentirsi così soffocato e grato di essere in questa posizione.
Chiedendomi dopo cosa possiamo fare con il nostro giardino sul retro per farla vedere. Attualmente è rotto e asciutto: molte piccole pietre e pezzi di plastica lasciati dai costruttori. Ho letto alcuni articoli relativi all’uso della combinazione di sabbia e suolo ecc. Chiunque aiutasse sarebbe fantastico: volevo diventare un orgoglioso Gardner.
https://www.reddit.com/gallery/1jsrvvw
di one_-_eye_-_wonder
37 commenti
This is the same as you will see with most new builds. They dont care about the gardens and use it for rubbish basically. Sometimes you can get lucky.
You could ask them for the same seeds, and then water it and add seeds, but what tends to be the case is the lack of decent soil and as you nocied, covered in small stones and crap.
We have been moved in 3 years. To this day we still have serious drainage issues with it causing the grass never to grow. They have attempted repair 4 times already. We have never had a nice/accessible garden during the summer.
I would get some opinions from professional landscapers, take their advice and do it myself. Unfortunately I don’t know any gardening/landscaping advice but that’s what I would do!
We had a similar issue a few years ago. We ended up almost starting from scratch by raking the garden quite well, picking out the heavier stones and because there was other phases being built we asked for a small bit of soil to be added from where they were digging for foundations. Overall it was about 8 hours work between raking and seeding but it turned out quite well in the end.
When it’s compacted hard like that we found pooling of water would happen on heavy rainfall.
Dig that shit up and start again
Set up a composting system with three bays made from pallets. Locate in area which gets least sun. Get some raised beds going and start growing food for yourself. Salad leaves, vegetables, etc. You could actually start growing some herbs right away. The Mediterranean plants do well in impoverished dry soil. Rosemary, thyme, sage, lavender. Put them against the wall/fence that gets the most sun.
Lots of cool ideas here: /r/gardening/
Sooner rather than later you’d wish for tarmac/concrete instead.
Give it a while, see how it handles heavy rain and where gets the sun in different seasons, what’s lightly shaded and heavily shaded in the summer, then plan your garden. If it needs a French drain you would want to put that in before spending money on flowers etc. Examine the soil structure and see how much clay is in it, you can test that yourself, then you’ve a better idea what you need to add to it.
That soil needs composting and mulching to aerate it and allow for drainage, when it’s wet in the autum start to dig it, get good compost and start digging it into the soil. Then next spring add topsoil and resend if it’s grass you want.
https://www.reddit.com/r/GardeningIRE/s/rRXNMsdEje
Few tips, might help you out..
You look to have predominantly subsoil at the upper layer of your yard, probably just dumped in and levelled off without separation of the topsoil into their places.
Fastest, and dearest, option is removing about 6″ off the whole area and buying in the equivalent level of topsoil. Not cheap at all.
If you’re not in too much of a rush, you can add organic matter to the top inch or two, mix it in and reseed it. It can be done in stages which might suit cashflow but make sure you stock up on enough grass seed to do the whole lot.
You can also fertilise it and add some grass seed to feed the grass until it gets established. Just be aware that soil is under severe water stress due to drought so you’ll have to ensure there’s enough water supplied to keep the seeds alive until their roots get deep enough to find the moisture lower down.
I’d be choosing the last opt, tbh, it’s by far the easiest and will only need water regularly this year. The grass itself, once established, will build up the soil organic matter and start building soil moisture reserves for future drought proofing.
Lad in our new build estate called up the builders and they came around and fixed it for free.
I was putting artificial grass down anyways so I wasn’t bothered, since I’ll be digging all mine up anyways, but worth a shot if you want to keep the real stuff
Ours is the same, I it’s awful looking. Most of it will be going as we are putting in a patio. Then whatever’s left I’m going to have levelled off and treated correctly.
Dig it up, remove any weeds, rotovate the soil, spread out a bit of multipurpose compost, pack it down with a roller, make sure its level, spread out some grass seed and add water.
You dont need to add the compost but your garden isnt that large so I’d probably add some if it was me.
It doesnt look level either so make sure to level it out or you’ll have puddles when it rains.
Put a TARDIS in there and you are sorted !
Needs good topsoil. That looks like clay or subsoil you won’t get much to grow in that.
We had the same in our new build. Got a rotivator and tore up the whole garden. Couldn’t believe the amount of building waste that we found buried under there. Filled a whole Skip with it.
Made a huge difference though. The new grass came back much better
Fork a load of composted manure into it and reseed. Now’s the best time to do it. You can rent electric tillers which should make the job easier.
Get yourself a tiller from your local tool hire. Do the whole garden. Then rake it. Take out the big stones and builders rubbish. Buy a few tonne of top soil, spread it, level it, re seed it. Water regularly depending on the weather.
Don’t do what I did and sieved the whole garden through a shopping basked! One shovel full at a time…
Needs some compost and a topsoil raked into it after being broken up
Best to rotavate and resow grass-seed
If its a new build go back to the contractor and tell them to fix it
Roto-till and add some peat moss. Seed, cover with straw and water daily until grass shows.
Builders bury a large proportion of their rubbish left over at the end of the build in the lawns of the houses. If you dig any any given spot in the garden you’ll hit builders rubbish.
If you want the garden to be any kind of quality at all I’d suggest getting a professional company to redo your lawn and remove some of the debris.
It’s shite soil that they put in the gardens unfortunately.
I have no input except to say fair fucks for getting somewhere, it’s an achievement, hope you’re happy in your new home!
Better job than mine.
My garden was more weed than grass. I contacted the developer to complain. Not much was done they chucked down some weed killer and that was it.
When the next phase was built though, the houses have impeccable grass. No one even living in them. So they took my complaint and fixed it for the next phase of houses.
I don’t even go into the garden cause it pisses me off to see it. I know it’s not a big job to get it turned over and new sod chucked down but I just don’t have the motivation.
Swing chair
The builders didn’t remediate the land properly because they’re too cheap to haul it away and don’t care about your future garden. They toss all the builders waste there and then cover it with minimal soil and hope for the best and that you don’t complain. They should be responsible for doing it properly, but you’ll likely have to do it yourself. Document everything and maybe you’ll have a case for a lawyer.
I was watching monty don the other day and he was having the same issue with his lawn and he had a few suggestions for getting it looking lush.
You can hire an aerator which will poke small holes in the ground. If you can’t get an aerator, you can do the same job with a garden fork, but it will be much harder work. Then what you need to do is get sand, you can use general builders sand and spread it over the lawn and rake it in. It’ll fill the holes you just made and help with drainage.
Then you can spread your lawn seed and water well, and watch your lawn grow. There’s more than likely a lot of videos on you tube on how to do it, that’ll take you a a lot less effort than digging up and starting again.
I hope that helps you. Congrats on the new house and enjoy your garden. There’s nothing better than having a place to call your own.
I’d imagine that the sides could get quite boggy after rain due to water running down the fence/wall. Perhaps have a bit of edging. A clematis would look nice on the back wall.
For the grass I’d kill it all with hypochlorite/roundup. Leave it two weeks to come out of the soil. I used the aerator on this which is small blades and on the lowest setting acts as a rotavator on the top layer. Get some top soil and rake in the seed.
[Rotavator](https://www.screwfix.com/p/essentials-32cm-1500w-raker-scarifier-230-240v/296FG?tc=NA2&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwzMi_BhACEiwAX4YZUKklI0-qvSnxwlPFxuDYO217Oa9uZjG7_MwrKZnepjZ3WK2fqzeQShoCB7QQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds)
Could be leatherjackets also. Best spray before new soil goes down again
yet another reason to avoid newbuilds.
I know this pain. Mine is way patchier than this. I reckon my only hope is to just start from scratch
Looks difficult but not impossible.
You say you want to be a good gardener. If so, Id be looking to do something a little more imaginative and nature-friendly than grass!
Soil there is mainly clay with little vegetation. You need to add a fuck load of bags of compost and mix it in well with a shovel. It’s a fair bit of work but it’s needed. Try to leave it loose, i.e. don’t try to level it or compact it, so it is well aerated. It’s so poor, I’d even consider getting a truck of topsoil. This had the advantage of coming with worms.
Get a rotivator, a load or two of topsoil, grass seeds and get to work bucko