Im new to this and could do with some advice

frankmckenzie1

We have recently renovated a beautiful 1800s cottage in a quaint little village in Norfolk. After all the house was stripped out including floors we were 75% complete with only the front and back gardens to do. Now with us all off work we thought we would get round to doing it but we are a couple who have never tackled gardening before. My problem is that all the materials that came out of the house were dumped in the front garden as getting a skip was no option. It has had rubble, wood, metal and anything else you could think of dumped on it. MY lovely wife done a lot of work on it to get it to the stage it is at now and the plan is to lay some turf and have a walkway up to the door with maybe a couple of trees either side of the walkway. 
With the ground how it is now what is the best preparation to lay the turf as I feel that laying it straight on top of the current ground would be a bad idea. 
Thank you in advance for any help.

Hostafan1

Welcome to the Forum.
Nothing compares with hard work at the start I'm afraid 
" If you fail to prepare, you should prepare to fail" 
Lots of good videos on You Tube on preparing for / laying turf

GemmaJF

Echoing Hostafan1, that will all need grading and leveling before turf. Lot of work, a garden sieve will help. Work in small areas, so you can slowly get parts completely cleared of hardcore, then level at the end. 

Gardening is like that, books say things like 'plant seeds in carefully prepared seed bed'. It takes 30 seconds to plant the seeds, probably several days to prepare the bed on some soils.

Anyone who ever put down a patio or turf, knows that laying the stones or turf is less than 1% of the job, the final result is all about the initial preparation.

Hostafan1

If you do it in  a  rush, and don't get it right, it'll annoy you forever. 
Let us see some more photos as you progress, ( inside and out if you want? ) we love a project.

frankmckenzie1

Thank you for above comments. I seen a few things that I have googled. I was looking at grading it but wasn't sure if I needed any topsoil down and maybe some compost before I even thought about buying the turf

GemmaJF

I would grade what is there, adding organic material to improve it, especially from a drainage perspective. Then I would buy in a good top soil which will rake and level easily. Then the turf. Companies like Dandy's (no connection simply ordered from them in the past) do specific lawn top soils ideal for the purpose.

frankmckenzie1

Do you think after grading we should rotovate it then add some compost type material to enrich what is already there. We will have a day grading tomorrow and see how we go