 | How To Lay Your Turf | The turf should be laid soon after the ground preparation has been completed. The main reason to prevent this is to prevent any weedgrowth developing.
The turf should be laid as soon as is practical following delivery (or collection), especially during warm weather conditions where turf has a short shelf life from the time it is cut in the fields to the time of laying. This is because the turf becomes warm whilst in its rolled form which results in rotting.
Before receiving delivery of your turf - we would strongly advise that you have available some timber boards/battens which you will use when laying the turf. The ideal size of the boards/battens would be 3-4m in length by 250-300mm wide and the quantity depending on the size of your lawn. One or two is fine for small gardens but ideally increasing in number for larger gardens.
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| Laying the Turf - Step 1 | You should begin laying your lawn by first of all by unrolling the first piece, lengthways along a left or right hand boundary. Before doing so place a board/batten on the soil, running parallel to the turf but slightly inboard of the first roll. This is so that you can stand on the board to lay the first roll.
Once the first roll has been laid, you should continue laying out further rolls along the boundary until you reach the far end of the lawn - ensuring that you have placed additional boards down on the soil to run alongside the turf that you will lay in the first row.
Each roll of turf should be laid evenly and in a straight line so that the next roll meets tightly with the short side i.e. the end of the previous roll.
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| Laying the turf - Step 2 | Once you have laid sufficient rolls to meet the far end of the lawn, one roll should be laid in the other direction i.e. left to right across the end of the lawn. This creates a neat border for your next row to run up to.
The next thing to do is, in turn, roll each of the boards onto the first row of turf and raise one end of each of the boards to a height of approximately 60cm and let it fall back onto the turf, lightly 'tamping' the turf level.
Before laying your second row, you should lay a roll of turf at the front end of the lawn running left to right (as with the roll at the far end of the lawn). Again, this will give you a neat edge to work to when laying each row.
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| The second row should be laid exactly the same as the first, ensuring the length and ends of each row meet squarely with the adjacent roll(s). It is important that any joints should be staggered in a 'brick bond' type configuration to help keep the newly laid rolls tight together.(see image to the right) You are likely to have some spare from the last roll of turf when you reach either end of the row.
We would recommend that this be cut off (ideally using a pair of edging shears) and used to start the next row. At this point you can decide whether to lay each roll of turf in the same direction in each row, or alternate. It doesn't really matter which way but alternating is usually the preferred method so that you can start the next row with the previous row's off-cut from where you are stood, rather than walk to the other end of the lawn each time.
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| Laying the turf - Step 3 | Remember to 'tamp' down each row of turf with the boards before proceeding to the next.
Once the lawn is complete, the boards can be removed but may come in handy to walk on when watering the turf - thus preventing any footprints in the newly laid lawn.
You must NOT walk on the newly laid turf until it has fully established and the ground has become sufficiently firm to walk on and not cause footprints. You may need to momentarily stand on the turf to enable watering, but providing this is kept to an absolute minimum should not cause any problems.
Even after the turf has fully established, we would also recommend not walking on the lawn during excessively wet weather conditions where the ground may lose some stability and thus increasing the chance of footprints.
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