Prep for laying turf on clay

[SunshineSmiley]

If anyone can offer any advice it would be hugely appreciated.

I bought a new build home a year ago, and have elected to do the garden myself rather than have the house builder do it. Finally getting round to it.

The 'soil' is pretty solid clay. DH has pulled out the weeds as best he can and rotivated. We have a delivery of top soil coming in a couple of days with the turf arriving next week.

We had heard benefits of laying sheets of carboard to surpress weeds. We proposed to turn the clay as we have done so its no longer compact and then lay the carboard with the top soil going on top then the turf.

Is this a good thing to do or should we skip the cardboard and just put the new top soil directly onto the rotivated clay?

Secondly, we want the grass to be raised by an inch or so from the flower beds to allow us to cut the really sharp lawn finish that you see in old estates. It always looks like the soil is just holding itself up. Will it? Or should i buy some kind of plastic edging?

Not sure about the cardboard but you don’t need plastic for the edges. Grass will naturally expand its area you get a tool and trim the edge off ( like a haircut) once a year. I’m sure there’s a proper name for it but essentially it’s a bit like a hoe.

I wouldn't bother using the cardboard if it's going under turf. I use cardboard a lot in the garden but in the borders as a weed suppressant and soil improver (eventually) as I'm also on heavy clay. But that's because it's the area I'll be digging and planting, I wouldn't bother if it was going to be covered by turf....grass is pretty good at competing with weeds.

@Badbudgeter thank you, il look into that tool.

@ThreeRingCircus thank you, I planted the border last year to try and get things growing. Its just a simple border a couple of foot wide round the square. The plants mostly seem to be taking off quite well. After the grass is down, DH will order some bark as we are getting a lot of weeds in the beds. Would it be worth sticking cardboard under the bark?

That tool is called a half moon edger. I spent many sullen hours as a gothy teen doing our lawn edges!

Half moon edger that’s the one. I just have weed proof membrane down under our bark tbh.

Yes, I've put cardboard under bark in my borders. Just wet the cardboard first before you lay the bark on top. It works well as you can just cut a hole in the cardboard if you want to plant things in the border.

There is a metal lawn edging that clips together. That gives you very crisp edges

We have a new-build too and the builders buried tonnes of rubble and hard-core under the turf. They did stick down about a spade's depth of clay top soil too. The result is a horribly waterlogged garden which is basically mud in the winter and baked solid in the summer. I hate it as everything i try to plant dies. So we decided to try raised beds and I experimented with the no-dig method and placed cardboard (with little ink) on top and let the worms do the work, and that seems fine so far. It's just the rest of the garden now!