Garden

[KN4321]

Hi thinking of buying a house - the only issue is this garden, which is putting me off! The garden is flagged and higher than the house level via steps. Can this be made one level and lawn placed? I have attached photos and an example of what we which to achieve. Could I do this myself or need a builder ? I was thinking removing flags, dig up the soil to level and place turf?

Take up flags, get person on a tractor to fig up top layer of rubble and replace with top soil. About 2k I would think.

Thanks for all the replies everyone :) :)

I wanted it level as I feel it’s unsafe for small children and I always wanted grassy garden when purchased a house. Lived in a flat for over 10 years needed a good garden.

All the suggestions are great.
Any more ideas would be great.
I will need to have a long think.

I think it’s hard to get digger and tractors in until they crane equipment over the garage, as it’s only small gap from front house to garden

I recently had concrete stepping stones (large) removed. Would've covered a third of your area. Cost me £600 including the removal and took a day. Just to give you an idea...

We have a small gap too, so no equipment other than a hand held drill and wheelbarrow..

If I were you I would keep the different levels and have one bit turfed and a patio on the other bit.
I would probably keep the raised beds you have around the edge too.

I love gardening though and that wouldn't put me off, I'd see it as a challenge!

Do lots of research, - if you know what you need you will be able to get things done cheaper, or at least not get ripped off. Then hire someone to do the stuff you can't.

It could be really lovely, can you post a diagram I cant quite see the layout of the levels from the photos?

We used a man and a mini digger to dig up and level our garden. Cost £800 for 2.5 days work including taking all the stuff away. We bought top soil form a local builder for about £200. We paid a garden designer £500 for detailed plans on what could be done with the space. Then we did the rest ourselves following the plans.

We didn’t turf the bit we dug up as we had another grassed/garden area we could use so we seeded the new lawn and landscape it ourselves. Turfing is expensive.

Sorry fir my ignorance. Is section A acting like retaining wall or is it B ? Or would all need to come down to the edge of property and new retaining wall built.

It's impossible to tell without looking what is underneath the fence.

There may be a retaining wall underneath the fence - I think that would be the most likely situation but, without physically checking it, it's impossible to tell.

If there is a wall underneath the fence then B would just be the equivalent of a raised bed in a garden which you can either keep or remove.

On the other hand, if there is nothing but soil underneath that fence then B is acting as the retaining wall, although it seems odd that it is so far into the garden.

Or would all need to come down to the edge of property and new retaining wall built.

You could do that if you really wanted to, but there is no actual need to do it.

I not sure how they would get mini digger in to back garden.

You can get very narrow diggers that are specially designed to fit through a normal doorway. See here for example, £80 to hire for the weekend:-

www.cjhire.co.uk/product/industrial/mini-excavators/doorway-mini-digger-1-ton/

I don’t think it will cost anything like £14 k.

You can hire the mini digger and skips and clear the site yourself for about 2k. I have done similar myself. It’s good fun but you must check beforehand what pipes and cables are in the way!

Priciest part is constructing the retaining wall which will be essential. Can you just get a separate quote this element?

Hi thanks for all the helpful replies.

Given me ideas to think about. Think I will need someone out to see if A or B is the retaining wall and if that needs to be built.

I hope I could do some work on it myself.

You could artificial grass over the exisiting flagstones? Not the same as real grass of course but parents have just rolled some out over a paved area, has absolutely transformed it.

I think I would keep the two levels and work with it, but you could hire a mini/micro digger and do the digging out and arrange skips for disposal, and then import topsoil and turf/reseed for a lawn.

If you need a retaining wall and it's over 450mm high I think you would need to have proper calculations done by a structural engineer, but then you could hire a bricklayer to build it for you.