THE LAWN RANGER

You know you’re getting older when you feel like the morning after but there’s been no night before ….

Every inch of my body aches!  Even sneezing sends pain ricocheting from muscle to muscle in my own personal post-gardening pinball machine.  I know the NHS is thinking of prescribing gardening instead of painkillers but give me Naproxen any day!

 

Healthcare-Arena and social prescribing

It’s my own stupid fault for deciding to repair the carnage left on the lawn by our builders after the soakaway was fitted instead of getting in professional lawn rangers to do the job.

Lawn carnage after soakaway fitted

 

Repairing the lawn

Ten out of ten awarded to our builders for the amazing work done on the new extension but a big fat zero for landscaping.  Anyone embarking on a construction project should ensure they set out their expectations for the quality of landscaping required around the finished build.  If I'd done this at the start of our project I wouldn't have ended up with a lawn lumpier than a beef stew with dumplings.

This is how our lawn was left by builders

 

How much soil do you need?

Having dug out the hastily thrown in clods of earth on top of the soakaway, it has taken two bulk bags of top soil to level out the top of the pit all of which had to be barrowed in from the front driveway.  That’s over 1,200 litres of soil.  

Sun’s out, guns out!  My arms are now as hard, brown and leathery as the best of landscapers having spent the last fortnight shifting this little lot.  This is definitely not what the chiropractor ordered for my bad neck.

 

Topping up the soakaway pit with soil

It’s often easy to underestimate the quantity of soil needed for this type of project as what looks like a huge bag of dirt doesn’t go far once it’s been compacted down.  We’ve used up every last drop of our bulk bags to patch up all the grassy bald patches and top up the side flower bed and that’s in addition to the 20 smaller bags of top soil we’d purchased earlier. 

 

Levelling and patching up the lawn

To top up the side border and complete the lawn repairs around 2,000 litres of top soil were used at a cost of almost £200.  Now I understand why there’s always a budget of about £4-£5,000 allocated on TV’s Garden Rescue’s revamping projects.  Pimping up your little piece of outdoor paradise doesn’t come cheap even if you are doing most of it yourself. 

Freshly sown grass seed under cover to stop birds

Let it grow

I’m hoping the grass seed I’ve sprinkled on top of all the soil patches will germinate before the pigeon posse gobble it all up.  What with all the hungry birds and the prolonged dry spell, it’ll be a miracle if anything grows.