Laying a lawn in a jungle

[badhorsey]

I've been attending to my garden for the first time in, well, years.

I'd quite like to put a lawn down, but have never attempted this sort of thing before. There are three factors that may present a problem, I think:

1. The garden slopes away down from the house

2. The garden consists of a path surrounded by sort of soily bits

3. There had been an invasion of thorn bush things. And there are a couple of trees.

We spent the weekend cutting away a huge bush that overhung from next door and chopped down the thorn bushes. I say bushes; they seem more like thorny vines that grew up from several points and were trying to choke everything else out.

What would be the best approach? Can I just dump a ton of soil on top of what's there already, level it out and then lay turf? Or do I need to take the path up first?

More of a concern - will the thorn things take hold again and start poking through the lawn in a year or two? We cut these right down but I suspect they're not the sort of things that die easily.

Any advice, pointers or suggestions highly welcome.

BH

[CSG2306]

Hi Badhorsey,

Ideally, the area in question should be dug over and weeded. All the roots from whatever should be removed otherwise they will soon show through and you will have thorn bushes everywhere. If you are going to level the area, then some form of retaining wall should be built before bringing in the top soil.

The ground should then be rolled and compacted, next lay the turf or seed the area.

Regards

[parkesquay]

In your own words you have not bothered for years so take a long term approach to making it more user friendly.
Get rid of the 'thorn bush things completely. Can be done with a lot of hard work and a rotovator(which can be hired locally),but remove them.
As CSG says you need to build some sort of retaining wall or walls in order to to lay a level lawn. There is bound to be a garden/patio/builders merchants nearby that will deliver topsoil in very large sacking bags. Usually the lorry comes with its own mini crane so if the bags have to be lifted over walls this is not usually a problem.
I have to say that I much prefer buying turf and laying it than growing from scratch(because the impact is instant and rewarding.
So rotovate first and make a plan of what you want your garden to look like.
If the area is really big then terrace it with smaller retaining walls. Some sort of campanula(bell shaped flowers)growing down over the top of a retaining wall looks really nice.
You can finish of your paths with something like chard flint which a sort of golden colour.