Garden Dilema

I’m planning to get the grass removed from my back garden (I have a dog. Lifting poop from grass is not pleasant). My plan was to get it all paved and the best price I got was £1500 which I think is pretty reasonable. The problem is I’m a first time homeowner and I don’t have that much £££. I was just wondering if it would be cheaper to just kill the grass and lay some stones over fabric? As stated, I have a dog so I just can’t have grass. Just wondering which would be better/cheaper? Thanks in advance. I have attached a picture of my back garden and a picture of the kind of stone surface I was thinking of.

You could get terram landscape fabric, then cover with gravel or similar.

However cats love to crap on gravelmor shingle so you might end up with more poo not less!

I had a similar problem I few years ago with our lawn.
It was also poorly drained due to our heavy clay soil, so when the ground was wet the dog's pee would just sit there and start to stink.

I dug down about 12 inches, laid down a 6-7 inch layer of large chippings, then a tough landscaping fabric (the cheap stuff tears far too easily), then finally topped up with pea shingle.
It was hard work, but it worked perfectly. The fabric separated the shingle from the chippings and stopped the two from mixing.

If your soil is free draining then you might not need to go to such lengths, but in our case it was well worth the extra effort.

Also, have you thought of using bark chips instead of chippings?

Good luck

I'd have thought picking up dog mess is harder to clean it up completely from loose gravel than from grass? If grass is kept short it's easy to pick up if done straight away imo. Agree with the cat and shingle comment though, cats may see it as one giant litter tray.

Yes cut the grass and keep it short

Get rid of the grass if you must then plant some flowers and/or ornamental shrubs. Will look much nicer than paving or gravel and will be easy to clean up the dogs do-das.