You may want it later as a foundation for paths or perhaps to drain a lawn. If the soil is naturally stony, save the stones. Grade them as you gather them into drainage, wall or path surface size. Do not bother to try to pick up small stones. These help aerate the soil.?
Once the site is cleared, you must dig and dig. This is probably best done with a fork rather than a spade, which is liable to chop through rooted tap weeds like dandelions thus propagating them. The fork will loosen the long roots and enable you to remove them. Always keep a container handy for these roots, and get rid of them by burning as soon as possible. If the tops are leafy, twist off this vegetation and use it on the compost heap which you ought to get going as soon as possible. If your soil is very light or sandy, you may find that only a spade is suitable for digging.
It is sometimes possible to hire a rotary digger. This will turn the ground over and also help to level it quite efficiently, but once done you should take special care to rake up all weeds, roots and fibrous matter.
Often the worse trouble in a new garden is mud, particularly if the builders have recently left. So it is to everyone's advantage to cover the ground as quickly as possible. You may be able to anticipate bigger jobs this way, for example, if you have planned where patio, paved paths or drives are going, then have a load of gravel delivered and get these areas covered.
A grassed area makes a garden look neater immediately. It keeps down the mud brought into the house, gives the children somewhere to play, keeps the soil in good heart until you are ready to make beds and borders, gives you valuable humus in the form of grass cuttings.
If there is grass already - and on building sites old meadow often exists - it can be mown for immediate tidiness. Most likely it can become a good lawn. Remember that grass is a good clean covering, and is well worth keeping even if it covers a larger area than you actually want as lawn. Even if you plan to get going on beds and borders fairly soon, you will find it an advantage to get grass cut as soon as possible for you can cut into the short turf with a spade much more easily than you will be able to into the hussocks of uncut grass. Another advantage is that once the lawn is down, big jobs such as planning a new border can be shelved to a convenient planting time.
Never take up grass roots or turves to burn (the pestilent couch grass is an exception). Rotted grass roots and turves make highly valued loam.
The turves you cut away when you design the borders need only be skimmed off the surface. First cut through with a spade, making a rough square, then slide the spade along under the turf as though it were a fish slice. You can then stack the turves grass side downwards. When they have rotted, they can be put back on the garden as good fibrous loam. You can also use turves stacked in this way as banks or low dividing walls. Pull out any tap roots of weeds.
Should you wish, you can let the turf stay and dig right through it, taking a slice of grass with every spadeful. In this case, see that you turn each spadeful so that the grass lies at the bottom and becomes well covered. It will then rot.
You can alternatively prepare the new garden plot to be sown with lawn seed for a stunning grass lawn.
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