I need to gravel over a lawn at the front of the house. Do I have to remove
the turf or can I just cover with weed inhibitor material and then tip the
gravel on?
thanks for any advice

"Dee" wrote in message
...
I need to gravel over a lawn at the front of the house. Do I have to
remove
the turf or can I just cover with weed inhibitor material and then tip the
gravel on?
thanks for any advice

I dare say an inch of loam topsoil takes over a thousand years to form on
bare rock and you wish to cover it up and make it unuseable. What a waste!
Why not recycle it?

I suggest you remove the turf and build it into a compost heap (upside down
of course) then remove all the topsoil - one of your neighbours might take
it away and use it or you could make a raised bed in your back garden
perhaps. I have quite a bit of topsoil removed before laying 14mm gravel
chippings; I dare say I'll find a use for it one day.

I know that some say you should use some sort of barrier between the gravel
and subsoil but if it's one of the porous barriers you will find that weeds
will push their roots through it and be more difficult to remove. If, on
the other hand, the layer of gravel is three or four inches thick, the weeds
pull out easily but if that's too much of a bind, scuff them out! I assume
that when you say "gravel" you mean "rejects" (rejected by a 1 inch riddle
say) and not gravel "as dug". The latter will be messy to start with but
will end up like concrete!

Regards

Geoff

I gravelled a small area of my front garden a couple of years ago. The
lawn, if you could call it that, was full of weeds on a clay soil, so there
was no need to take up the turf. Used weed killer then laid down a porus
membrane, then covered in gravel, planted a few low growing plants.


"Dee" wrote in message
...
I need to gravel over a lawn at the front of the house. Do I have to
remove
the turf or can I just cover with weed inhibitor material and then tip the
gravel on?
thanks for any advice

Dee wrote in message
...
I need to gravel over a lawn at the front of the house. Do I have to
remove
the turf or can I just cover with weed inhibitor material and then tip the
gravel on?
thanks for any advice

Whatever you decide to do, please report back on how well it worked - I am
doing precisely the same as you, and would be interested in your experience.

Jo

I need to gravel over a lawn at the front of the house. Do I have to
remove
the turf or can I just cover with weed inhibitor material and then tip
the
gravel on?
thanks for any advice

Whatever you decide to do, please report back on how well it worked - I am
doing precisely the same as you, and would be interested in your
experience.

Jo

Our lawn always looked a mess - it was used as a dog toiler and full of bare
patches etc, so I dug it up two years ago and spread three ton of gravel on
the area without any membrane. It has worked very well. Since the gravel is
spread onto well compacted sub soil, very few weeds attempt to come up. The
constant trampling helps to keep them at bay.
The lawn turfs were stacked upside down for six months then the soil spread
onto the veg plot making this an extra thick layer of top soil - great for
veg.

--
Drakanthus.


(Spam filter: Include the word VB anywhere in the subject line or emails
will never reach me.)

On Sat, 24 May 2003 18:05:10 +0100, "Drakanthus"
wrote:


Our lawn always looked a mess - it was used as a dog toiler and full of bare
patches etc, so I dug it up two years ago and spread three ton of gravel on
the area without any membrane. It has worked very well. Since the gravel is
spread onto well compacted sub soil, very few weeds attempt to come up. The
constant trampling helps to keep them at bay.
The lawn turfs were stacked upside down for six months then the soil spread
onto the veg plot making this an extra thick layer of top soil - great for
veg.

I blame the dog crap :-)
--
martin

"geoff" wrote:

Hello geoff

the turf or can I just cover with weed inhibitor material
and then tip the gravel on? thanks for any advice

g I dare say an inch of loam topsoil takes over a thousand
g years to form on bare rock and you wish to cover it up and
g make it unuseable. What a waste! Why not recycle it?

On the other hand, when he moves the new occupants might be pleasantly
surprised when they decide to put turf down where the gravel is to
find a nice seperating membrane and lovely turfable topsoil
underneath...

If he did as you suggest, they'd have no topsoil and would have to
import it. Very few things you do in your garden are permanent;
fashions change, hardscapes fail, gardeners change. The pond you broke
your back digging might be filled in by the next people along who
don't want to risk it with a young child. That's half the joy of
gardening, knowing it changes every year - with or without your help.
That's also why I'll never go back to a garden I've previously worked
on.

Only the very rare thing will last more than half a lifetime so it's
kinda nice to think of future gardeners sometimes.

--
Simon Avery, Dartmoor, UK Ý http://www.digdilem.org/

"Dee" wrote in message
...
I need to gravel over a lawn at the front of the house. Do I have to
remove
the turf or can I just cover with weed inhibitor material and then tip the
gravel on?
thanks for any advice



Depends on what you want to do with it - for just low maintenance kill the
weeds with glycophosate type weed killer, follow up with sodium chlorate
type about 3 weeks later then, level the area (a thin layer of sand helps
with this), cover it with a weed proof porus membrane or even better just
old carpet, ---- you can use polyethene but you will need to leave big
drainage gaps or slope it to allow run off to avoid it becoming a pond.
The weed proof membrane also allows you to get away with less gravel.

On some of my ground I have used an old painter disposable dust sheet
covered by forrest bark its worked a treat for 3 years now on other paths I
have old carpet under red chips.

However if by chance you want to run a car on to it you need 2 to 3 inches
of compacted "Type 2" hard core below the gravel particularly on a clay or
lght sandy soil..