Lawn thwarted! Help please!

[GastroTurf]

Have just discovered that underneath the vile concrete slabs in our garden there is solid concrete. We wanted to lay a lawn so that DD can play, but can't afford the extra cost of breaking up the concrete (there are lots of other costs like new fencing as well).

Any ideas? Can a lawn be laid in a large raised bed? What about drainage? Are there any other playable-on surfaces that we should consider?

The builder is already on site so we need to decide fairly quickly!

Ah yes. You need to lay a bed of flexible mesh, scatter compost, then seed and you will have a drainable, softish surface of lush grass.

It's called soil retention matting.

Thanks, how deep does the matting need to be, and can I lie it straight on top of the concrete? Will there be enough drainage? I also wanted to lay turf, rather than grass seed.

Yes there will be enough drainage and the mesh is about two inches thick normally. Turf is not your friend. Grass seed will do the same just two weeks later. See how it works here: www.geotechnics-uk.com/content/trinter-soil-retention-mat

Thanks for that, will look at the link.

The reason we wanted to do turf was so that we could use the lawn pretty much straight away, at least to let DD toddle on, whereas keeping her off a newly seeded patch of soil would be difficult.

Even with turf you need to stay off it for 3 weeks to a month.

You'll find grass takes well with soil retention matting, it really webs down - you want to buy some hardy grass though - ideally one of the more expensive mixes rather than el cheapo value grass seed.

You do need to keep off it for a month but it's coming up to the season where you will get it watered for you every day so you may not want to be toddling over it anyway. It won't matter if you do though, it'll just take longer to establish.

Didn't know you couldn't use turf straight away, thanks for that info. (Although I suppose it's not quite as vulnerable as new seedlings of grass).