Advice on Soil/Turf movement and planning (for Turfing) please

So i had an extension done on my house about 6 months ago and have pretty much left the garden as a DIY project (obviously been a bit lazy since i've now only just gotten around to it) lol

But finally getting around to the stage where i am looking to turf the remaining part of my garden (patio just got done recently).

The thing is once all the building work had completed what was left on top of the remaning land was pretty much a mess, it was esentially like a 1cm layer of rocks, pebbles, nails, moss, sand etc.

The right side of my house the land is pretty level with the patio but on the left side it is raised quite abit.


the raised area


So i was thinking to try and dig at this soil and bring it over to the right hand side as i will need some to put some down before i lay the turf on it anyway, and also saves me having to go and buy top soil aswell.

My questions are:

does that 1cm of 'muck' currenly on the top layer make much difference? because i have spent pretty much a whole day so far just scraping at the top of it with a shovel and trying to esentially 'peel it back' but i've only covered about a few sq M before i ran out of rubble bags and got tired lol

since top soil will go above it anyways shall i just leave it and spread it on top of it? or maybe just break it up with a soil rake and mix it around so that some of the stones get hidden underneath. Just wondering if it was worth using my my hours doing that when it might only make like 10% difference.

Any advice is appreciated on how to best lay turf in this situation. Thanks

oh also forgot to ask what type of turf is good (what to look out for)? as in maybe a decent type or like how much i should be paying per roll for it. Thanks again

There's a strange phenomena where stones will come to the surface of soil every winter... they don't really know what causes it afaik (some say it's frost), but if you leave too many stones in the soil, even with top soil on top, you may find your lawn becomes a bit bumpy in time! Am in the same situation as yourself (just waiting for turf to come back to the high st), but I took all those bits of rubble and stones out while turning it over well. It is knackering though, I admit.

Other than that, looks like you just have to level it off before the turf. As to price, I haven't a clue - but my partner bought expensive stuff once to try and not have weeds. Didn't work

A bag of seed is cheaper, just pickup the nails by hand, and sand is fine for grass, used in all golf courses.

Small items migrate downwards, stones don't migrate upwards, it just seems that way.
If you eat muesli (someone has too) and keep it in a Tupperware box, you will notice that the small bits and dust manage to fall between the tasty bits of fruit and after a week or two all you get is dust. Ditto cornflakes. Shaking the container reshuffles the mix

Tricky with a garden but try to get the bigger stones out