Mike Lyle wrote:
SNIP
(Not part of the question, and of course you know more about your
garden than I do, but actually people don't always need topsoil as
badly as they think. Sometimes a really forbidding site turns out to
need no more than a bit of heavy clearing and ordinary soil
improvement measures. If heavy clearing is necessary for rubble etc,
topsoil isn't always the cure. If you're not certain about this, we
like talking about that here!)

Mike.
Thanks for all your replies. As regards your appendum Mike, I am afraid
that the land is very sloping, and any topsoil has been washed to the
bottom. All that I have is gravel, I believe it is called, though to me
it is various sizes of pebbles kept apart by small amounts of sand and
clay. The only way to "dig" it is with a pickax! A visitor told me
that the fact that gorse is infecting the area is a certain sign of no
or very poor topsoil.

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