Carefully take up and stack the grass turves upside down in an odd corner to
rot. Cover with porous black sheeting to prevent growth of weeds and in a
year or so you'll have a great fibrous soil compost

Skim off the topsoil progressively across the area and put it in raised beds
placed where you decide. You may need to add peat and/or grit.

When all the area is populated with the raised beds you decide on, surround
with 14 mm gravel chippings about 100 mm deep. Large areas of gravel can be
populated with small wooden planters (like the raised beds) but just having
dishes and flower pots in them. DO NOT have any membrane under the gravel.
Polythene sheeting really is no good and a porous membrane, although it
prevents weed growing upwards, it does not stop wind blown seeds growing
downwards and gripping the membrane with their roots making large
weeds/grass difficult to remove. If you work out the cost, I dare say deep
gravel without membrane is cheaper that half the depth of gravel with
membrane!

That's what I did with most of my front 20 by 8 metre front lawn. Each side
of my 300 mm raised beds are made of two lengths of 150 mm gravel board
held together with 300 mm lengths of small sized roofing battens cut at
45deg. and nailed with vertical spacing the width of a batten . Painted a
terra cotta colour on the outside with bitumen paint on the inside, they
look a treat and many people have said how good the garden now looks. My
two 1.2 X 2.4 metre beds are planted with various coloured heathers and
three approx.1.5 m square beds have small trees and springtime bulbs in
them.

A narrowish herbaceous border (h.b.) surrounds the area and is separated
from
the gravel by 150 mm gravel board similar to the raised beds. That almost
completes the picture except that one larger h.b. is now planted with a
variety of shrubs, bulbs, primroses and cyclamen poking through a mulch of
bark chippings to keep weeding to a minimum. There's also two small pea
gravel mulched 150mm high 450 mm square raised beds on the larger h.b. -
they have minarett apples in them.

I would have sent you a picture but your ISP does not allow attachments.

Regards

Geoff