How to lift artificial turf and lay grass?

[NattyBeaker]

Recently bought a newbuild and there is a large section of the garden with artificial turf. Any tips on lifting this and putting real grass? Should I use seeds or get the one you roll out? Can I just put compost down first?

A selfish bump for you OP as I'd like to know this too!

What's underneath, just bare earth? If so I would rake, scarify, basically air it out a bit, maybe as you say some compost scattered for some nutrition and then grass seed. It's the perfect time of year coming up. I wouldn't spend loads on turf particularly

A bump from me too as in the same situation. Thanks

Just a thank you to those people wanting to replace hideous plastic grass with the real thing. The bees and I salute you!

Not exactly the same situation, but we recently seeded a lawn after renovating. The garden had been overgrown for over 10yrs, then 2yrs of renovations with all manner of brick off cuts, ciggarette butts and rubbish being left behind. We had the ground scraped of the rubble/crap, then added about 30cm of top soil. New builds commonly have very shallow, poor soil, potentially with rubble and debris underneath. It really depends if this is the case, or whether you do have a good depth of soil?

I read about rolls vs seeding and whether additional manure/nutrients are required. We were advised we didn't need manure, because the top soil we'd added was sufficient.

We decided to seed. We have a large garden, and rolls might have dried out before we could have laid them all, plus, I'd read that seeding knits together better and doesn't leave lines.

As a side note, I bought rolls of holographic paper ribbon, which I attached to cane poles in an attempt to stop the pigeons eating the seed. Add extra seed- because they WILL eat some! Oh, and they aren't phased by holographic strips flapping about!

Hello! I've recently removed a large amount of artificial grass from my garden although have replaced with gravel paths and flowerbeds so I can’t really help with the turf part.

Depending on how professionally it has been laid, you’re likely to find a layer of sand, a weed membrane and then 3- 6 inches of compacted MOT type 3.

We first of all rolled up the plastic (Be warned it is HEAVY - we had to cut it into sections so a carpet cutter type tool is handy) I then bagged up all of the sand layer into rubble bags. Then did the same with the MOT (it’s compacted but diggable with the right tools!) it was hard work but we didn’t have the money to pay someone else! We were leaving some of the hardcore layer in place as that was the base for the gravel paths so I just dug the MOT out of the areas I wanted to grow things in, and put soil on top of these to plant in. I guess if you want to returf you’d need to remove it all and then probably add a layer of topsoil back down on top of the compacted earth?
We didn’t get a skip – a surprising amount of people were willing to come and pay to take everything away from us! I just advertised on FB marketplace. I gave some of the MOT away in the end but a lot of it actually sold. Amazing what people will buy if it’s £1 a bag!
It was so worth all the hard work. I am so excited about seeing all the things I planted last autumn coming back to life now.It was so sterile and hot out there before.

DM me if you want, I’d be happy to share more info if you like!

Well it was sunny today so DH and I lifted it. It weighed a ton and was in 2 pieces. Advertised on Facebook for a nominal £50 and someone collecting it tomorrow 🤪. It seems to be on a base of coarse sand and as our soil is dense clay I think I will just add a layer of top soil and grass seed. Can't believe how easy it was.

Yay! Well done for restoring some natural green back to the world! It's such awful stuff for so many reasons...

I've just had turf laid. They leveled the topsoil, added a layer of sand & laid the turf on top.
Well done for getting rid of the awful plastic stuff.
Of course there is the option of wildflowers or something else instead of grass?

Hope you got a discount on your purchase for having to put up with plastic carpet! If it's been laid properly there will be a lot of drainage materials and no top soil. You'd need to remove all the sub base and import top soil.