Newly laid turf

The people who lived in our house prior to us moving in decided to put round beds in the middle of the lawns. Now this may look pretty - well, they would if they had nice flowers in them - but they are a royal pain when it comes to mowing.

So a couple of weeks ago we decided that we'd do away with at least one of them - the one by the greenhouse. This is what it looked like (pic taken winter 2008-09)

This was how the lawn looked before Emily's work

So we started the job and Emily took it upon herself to dig out all the plants that were in the bed. This was not an easy task considering the vegetation was in full growth. After a few hours of hard work and sheer determination she had dug everything out. Well done Emily - fantastic job!

The next day I set about squaring off the edges and levelling the earth. I gave it all a good soaking and then laid some rolls of plush new turf.

This is the result:

New lawn

After laying the turf I kept it well watered over then next few days to make sure the roots didn't dry out while it was knitting into the earth.

The hardest job was making sure that the new turf was level with the existing garden. In some places this is not quite right but there's not a lot I could do about it at the time.

We're really pleased with it and it's opened up the lawn a lot. We plan to do the other round bed in due course.