Drainage and new grass using type1?

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Our garden is about 7m wide by approx 10m long. It's so weedy and uneven I'm going to just start again, in the winter it also gets surface water which I've tried to airate it but no luck. Digging down I've found its rubbish ground and quite clay based. Had a friend look who's a landscaper who's said he would take the top grass off turn it all over on itself then put 12tons of type 1 down and about 3 ton of topsoil on top then seed it.

Just want a second option as type 1 is mentioned it sounds more like a patio being created haha. Will this help with drainage? The garden is on a slight slope.
 
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Im not sure, type 1 has quite a lot of fines and when compacted locks together hard, it is porous though.

I suppose subsoil is porous and thats almost all fines.

Perhaps the landscaper is right, Id be interested to see if any pro landscapers have an opinion.....
 
Does anyone else think this will work or have used this method before?
 
Clay soils really should be helped with organic matter, not all this imo. Personally speaking if I were using type 1, I'd use quite a lot of topsoil if you're sticking it on top of this which makes it expensive. Grass roots can go around 20cm deep (and deeper, depending on the type of grass) and they won't be able to get to the water or nutrients if faced with a whole lot of type 1. You may find yourself watering the grass every day in the summer and feeding it instead of being faced with a clay lawn.

Happy to be corrected though!

Oh, I think the advice for new turf is to take all large bits of stone, brick and whatever delights a lawn can hide out of the soil as part of the prep. A few inches down. We recently took out approx 200 bags of rubble & rubbish out of our garden to prep for new turf (It was paving slabs before then) and the turf part is only 10ft by about 4 ft strip. Bloody knackering!
 
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Thankyou for the advice. He said type 1 would be about 100mm deep and top soil about 50-75mm deep. He would use drought grass seed and grass usually only go down around 50mm.
 
I always thought that drought seed meant the roots went deeper, to combat the lack of water. Every lawn recommendation says about 12-15cm of good soil for the grass to be laid/sown. Deep roots = healthy, strong grass.

It's up to you, do whatever you like as it's no skin off my nose, but I would recommend doing some reading for yourself! Good luck.

https://www.gardeningdata.co.uk/lawns/seeds_lawns.php
 
If he's suggesting going to the lengths of turning it all over, why not just mix in sharp sand to the existing soil to improve drainage, then the topsoil? The head greenkeeper at a golf course on very clayey(?) land advised herringbone drainage was first prize, but failing that, tons of sharp sand
 

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