What to do with grass? Making a pool area with pea gravel...

[jdthe4th]

Hi All,

I'm wanting to lay down a 70m2 area with pea gravel and pavers for around a pool and some.
The ground's covered with all sorts of things... ie. grass, weeds, bluemetal etc. It's going to cost me around $800 to get Bob in to take out and replace with topsoil. I'm figuring after that, I weed kill, lay thick plastic and then put down my pea gravel.

It's a job I'd prefer not paying too much for, so my question is....
Will the grass and weeds still end up growing back and eventually through my plastic which will result in me trying to weed kill anyway.

Can i just weed kill the entire area and lay my gravel on top of that and just keep up the weed kill in the arrea. Will the pea gravel soak up the killer and not let it get down to the soil/grass.
I guess I'm hoping this can be done, but i realise it's probably not the best way to go about it.

Any input would be great, but if someone out there does know that weed killing through gravel is possible I'd love to hear about it! (:

Cheers guys. - JD

[rainbowgardener]

I'm not sure I'm quite following all that. Why bother to have new topsoil brought in if you are just going to kill it and cover in gravel? You could do that to whatever is there already.

Mow it to get rid of anything tall and then lay down a thick layer of something to suppress the weed/grass growing, could be carpet remnants, layers and layers of newspaper, etc. After everything is dead you can remove that, put down the weed barrier, then your gravel and pavers. A layer of paver sand under the gravel (over the weed barrier) will help suppress any regrowth, as well as being easier to level.

That should take care of weeds for a few years. Life is very persistent (have you seen plants growing up through cracks in driveways?) and no matter what you do, eventually some weeds will come back.

If you smother the weeds first, then put down weed barrier and paver sand, I don't know that the poisons add anything. Most of them don't persist in the soil forever anyway (thankfully!). So a few years from now when the weeds are starting to make it through all of the above, the poisons wont still be around.

[MysticGardener67]

I have to go with rainbow gardener with this one. Seems counter productive to bring in topsoil that won't see plant one in it.


If your friend is going to bring in soil, will he be willing to haul some away? If so, Your best bet is to remove the top, oh three or four inches or so. then lay down a WOVEN weed barrier THEN add pavers and gravel.

With the top three inches of soil gone, you will have effectivly removed ALL chance of weeds. Notice that I said to use WOVEN weed barrier/ landscape cloth. solid plastic will not allow rain water or splashed out pool water to drain away, it will stay under the surface of the gravel, become befouled and a haven for mosquitos.

the ONLY gisadvantage of the woven cloth is that if you allow a weed to set roots in it, the roots will securely anchor it into the fabric, making it nearly impossible to dislodge without pulling up the cloth.

If you are diligent in pulling any new weeds that develop from blown in locations, this will NOT be an issue.