HelpfulGardener.com

Hi, apologies if this has been asked before.

I have an area at the bottom of my garden that was very overgrown. I am in the process of cutting it back and am going to turn it into lawn. The issue is that it drops away about three feet and I want to bring it up to the level of the rest of the garden. The area is about 20 metres by five metres so is not small...

What should I use to fill in the drop? I will put some gravel in to aid drainage but should I use topsoil for the rest of the fill? Guessing that will be very expensive!!

Thanks

Tatty

You are in the UK? (Or somewhere in the majority of the world that uses metric). I don't know how it is where you are, but here you can get topsoil quite cheap, delivered, if you order it by the cubic yard, or the ton, or the truckload. Just be sure it is actually topsoil, not fill dirt (which might be the clay they dug out in digging foundations) or other stuff. Get your space filled in and then let it settle. Then add a top layer which is some mixture of enriched topsoil, compost, aged composted manure, maybe some peat moss or coconut coir or other organics.

I don't know if you are still around, but I looked at this again. If you have 3 feet depth (interesting mix of English and metric measures in one sentence!), you don't need three feet of topsoil, especially for grass. You could put down your gravel, plus a 1 - 1.5 feet of fill dirt or whatever is cheapest, and then fill the rest with topsoil. Then still do the top layer of good enriched stuff after everything else has settled awhile.

You will need a bit more than 2.5 cubic yards total fill, I would go as high as 3CY so you can compact it down. You could get that much delivered as top soil, if you need to have drainage then get a yard or so of grave first. A good size pick up truck holds about a cubic yard. Lay the soil down so it is higher than the rest of the area and rent a roller to flatten and smooth it out.