Replacing paving with turf advice

[Deano801]

Hi all,

I have stumbled across a thread you were commenting on, after seeking some much needed advice.
I am wanting to convert my garden that was currently designed with decking, raised beds and paving slabs when we first brought our house 5 years ago. Now we are delighted to be expecting our first child. This has spurred me to re-design our garden so it's a much more child friendly envoirment. We would like grass so our child can play in the future. Please see pictures above for before and after.
The advice I am after is, what and how to do next? Ideally I want the open area where the sand/mortar currently sits to all be soiled and eventually grassed. But having read so many posts I'm unsure of whether to totally dig up the current surface so it's free of mortar and rock or just loosen it off. Also what you can see in the distance of my garden is an existing pond that was sitting nearly 5ft deep. I have filled this up with broken breeze blokes for now to mearly fill this void. Does anyone have any recommendations on what to do next? I'm really struggling. Ideally it would be eaiser to get someone in and do the entire lot but this would come at a huge cost and this is what I'm trying to avoid. I have a fantastic family that are all willing to muck in, I just need direction.



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[WabbitPoo]

As you might expect you need to skip all that rubble away, bring in many tons of good top soil (try to avoiud screened soil from skip companies) and then put turf or seed down. Simple!

As to how much rubble you need to clear, if the top soil ends up 6" deep then as long as the rubble is broken up then that'll be enough to grow grass.

 

[Deano801]

As you might expect you need to skip all that rubble away, bring in many tons of good top soil (try to avoiud screened soil from skip companies) and then put turf or seed down. Simple!

As to how much rubble you need to clear, if the top soil ends up 6" deep then as long as the rubble is broken up then that'll be enough to grow grass.

Wabbit, thank you for taking time to reply. What do you think about the existing soil I already have in the beds in the corners of the garden. Would I need to make sure the top soil I order is the same PH as the soil that I already have. From previous posts it says they need to be similar in order for the grass to grow properly.
Also am I write in saying that if I was to use my existing soil, I need to kill all the weeds first with weed killer, so I don't get the problem of weeds growing through when I lay the grass??

Thanks again mate

 

[WabbitPoo]

nah - you are worrying too much about pH. Dig out the deep-rooted weeds such as dandelions but by the time you've raked all the soil around the rest of the weeds will be dead.