New flower bed

[MightyMeerkat]

The former owners of my house loved gravel! It was everywhere. A year and a skip later, most of it has gone thankfully.

The last bit to do is under the bay window. I want to remove the gravel and have a flower bed there to give the house some kerb appeal. However when I took the top gravel up, I found more gravel. From what I can tell, no membrane has been put down so it's just gravel on top of gravel. I bought a sieve thinking I would dig down a bit and sieve most of the gravel out but it's impossible. I can hardly get the fork in the ground and when I do manage it, it just reveals more gravel!

Any suggestions what I can do? I'm wondering whether I could just put 6 inches of compost on top and then plant some shallow beddding flowers etc in it. Or would the compost just wash away eventually?

Thanks.

Perhaps you could make a raised border and fill that with compost. I expect if you have so much gravel underneath you would have good drainage. You would probably need to make the raised border sit away from the property wall to allow air flow.

6" of compost won't be near enough for plants to survive, and you would likely compromise the damp course. How about some nice pots with annual bedding plants?