ᐅ Garden = bumpy terrain or uneven ground

Hello,

our garden is naturally quite uneven, and now there are also piles of topsoil lying around, heavy clay soil. The latter might still be spread by hand in spring, but what about the rest?

This raises the question whether the lawn needs to be completely level (which it won’t be anyway with an 1100 m² (11,840 sq ft) plot and slopes in both length and width) or what kind of unevenness do you tolerate behind your house? Since I also want to plant some small trees and shrubs in spring, I need to consider this in advance.

What kind of equipment would I need?

We have a slope of about 10 m (33 feet) over a total length of 35 m (115 feet). So it’s quite significant. This can only be managed with terracing, which is currently rather minimal. The equipment depends on the soil; where we are, you need a pickaxe to dig a planting hole. So I would prefer to fill in rather than excavate. Since the soil piles are still around anyway, I would probably build a few small retaining walls and spread the soil as evenly as possible. We can’t use a mini excavator because the site is inaccessible by vehicle anywhere.

Does the clayey soil come from the excavation? Silt?

Yes, since we do not have a basement but mostly excavated at surface level.

I would remove the silty soil and replace it with proper topsoil.
Silty soil is like mud! When it rains, it becomes very slippery. You can scrape it off like cake dough from a bowl. You would first need to bring it in with a small tracked dumper. After that, the soil would have to be tilled multiple times. However, bumps will keep forming because the material compresses easily even under light pressure. This means establishing a new lawn will be quite difficult. Whether the lawn and bushes will thrive in this soil is uncertain... In any case, I would add different soil along with sand to the planting holes. Clay binds water very strongly!