Preparing for Hydroseeding
Landscaping is one of those tasks that many put in the too hard basket when the reality is a lot of your properties value sits outdoors.Before we got our dog we had a perfectly manicured white stone path, she quickly turned it into her play pit and put stones everywhere. Combine that with the patchy blend of lawn/weeds and ankle rolling pits caused by the earthquakes, we decided it’s time we paid some attention to this area of our property.We got planning and included a garden renovation in the mix when mapping out what we needed to do. We were under time constraints with winter just around the corner so needed to get moving. we started by stepping out the process so we knew what we needed and when
The process of replacing your lawn
Spray the existing lawn
Remove the path
Remove the existing lawn and top layer of topsoil
Build garden edges
Put a new layer of topsoil down
Compact
Hydroseed
We were completely blind to how extensive this work will be so I’m glad we did our research to get the process right but if I'm being honest we touched base with Canterbury Lawns nice and early and they gave us advice along the way.It’s important you do the planning before you rip into it so you don’t have any surprises like the price of topsoil and how much you’ll need.
We worked out our rate of topsoil being 50mm across the lawn so need 3 cubic meters, there are some great tools online to get you this measurement.Going to Kennards Hire for all our hire equipment was the best decision. Their team helped us find what we needed and I’ve never received such incredible customer service (honestly they shocked me it was that good).
We got straight to work with a turf cutter that thing is a bloody good work out. Once all the turf was gone we built our new raised garden beds to box up the gardens and create a border for the lawn. This was pretty straight forward just make sure you get timber that can be underground and not rot. Our tool shout out here was the RYOBI 18V ONE+ Brushless Planting and Digging Tool, it saved us a lot of work with the digging the holes for the pegs. We also realised at this point that our lawn was completely unbalanced to the level of the house so a good opportunity to straighten that up.
The laying and compacting of the topsoil was the easy part, I unloaded it into a wheelbarrow and Mooch with her meticulous eye evened it out. Once we were all done here it was time to call in Canterbury Lawns and get their crew in with hydroseed. This is like the icing on the cake - literally. They sprayed a mix of brown top, fescue, and ryegrass onto the topsoil and it’s all done in about 10 minutes! Their team also provided us with an aftercare sheet which is so helpful because all the info we found online varied from the weather we have here. Keep an eye on our Instagram for progress.
