Garden = Bumpy track

Hello,

our garden is naturally a bumpy track and now there are also the mounds of earth (topsoil) lying around, heavy clay soil. The latter might still be spread by hand in spring, but the rest?

That raises the question whether it even has to be a perfectly level lawn (it won’t be anyway with an 1100 sqm plot and slope in both longitudinal and transversal directions) or what do you tolerate behind your house? Since I also want to plant some small trees and bushes in spring, I would have to consider that beforehand.

What equipment would I need?

We have a slope of about 10 m over the entire length of 35 m. So, quite a lot. This can only be done with terracing, which is currently rather sparse. The equipment depends on the ground; here you need a pickaxe to dig a planting hole. So, I would rather fill up than dig out. Since the piles are still lying around anyway, I would probably build a few retaining walls and distribute the soil as evenly as possible. We can't use a mini excavator here because the property is not accessible anywhere.

Is the clayey soil from the excavation? Silt?

Yes, since we don't have a basement but mostly removed superficially.

I would remove the silt and replace it with proper topsoil. Silt is mud! Like grease when it rains. You can scrape it off like cake dough from a bowl. You would first need to haul it in with a single-axle cart. After that, it would need to be tilled multiple times. However, bumps will always reoccur because the stuff gives way even under slight pressure. This means that establishing the lawn will be very difficult. Whether the lawn and bushes will like the soil... in any case, I would add different soil as well as sand to the planting holes. Clay binds water very strongly!