Garden flooring

melanie 568

Evening all,

We recently moved into a house that is a renovated old brewery, and have started work on the garden this week. It was mostly covered with stone chips but we were not keen on this as they are not comfortable to sit out on so thought we would lay a small lawn. However, removing the stones we have found it is basically solid clay and there is also a manhole cover, we'd need a good layer of topsoil for a lawn to survive and digging it out isn't an option.

So, really looking for any ideas for what we can cover the surface with. We don't have a huge budget to have it paved, or decked at the moment. I have seen some click together decking tiles at Ikea but I'm not sure how sturdy they would be for kids to play on. 




The space is about 2.7m x 4m and there is a step down to a shady area where we are happy to leave the stone chips.

Any creative, budget friendly ideas?
Thank you!

AnniD

You can buy outdoor tiles from places like B&Q but this may be outside your budget, also possibly not child friendly, depending on what they get up to !.
https://www.diy.com/departments/flooring-tiling/tiles/DIY566460.cat?Location=Outdoor

 The only other thing l can think of at this time of night is playbark, or possibly artificial grass. An anathema on a gardening forum, but in view of what you have to deal with and budget constraints, it might be worth considering. You could try Freecyle or Facebook marketplace perhaps. 

JennyJ

I also thought bark for a play surface that could be replaced with paving when budget allows or when the children are older. Or maybe some kind of rubbery flooring like playgrounds have these days, but that's probably as expensive as paving. Decent artificial turf laid properly is quite expensive as well.

Uff

AnniD said:

The only other thing l can think of at this time of night is playbark, or possibly artificial grass. An anathema on a gardening forum, but in view of what you have to deal with and budget constraints, it might be worth considering. You could try Freecyle or Facebook marketplace perhaps. 

I think this is a good idea to solve a temporary problem. A friend obtained some from Freecycle that she used for her grandchildren to play on whilst she was planting her new garden up. 
My granddaughter got some from Facewotsit to use for her dogs to run on instead of bringing mud into her new build house. Again as a temporary measure.