Garden terracing - Dig out or just fill

[DorrisMorris]

Advice please. Tackling the garden. 29m long 9m wide and slopes up away from the house 1.25m gradient higher at the end of the garden fairly even gradient of around 5cm incline per m. Its currently a bloody eyesore . Every cat in the street seems to use the garden as a toilet.

I've Installed new patio and drainage (sump pit working well) immediately outside the house (4.5m x 9m) and installed 1st gabion wall 0.5m on edge of patio.

I plan to put in another gabion wall two thirds of the way up the garden so that I can have a flat gravel area at the top of the garden for a shed, greenhouse and some raised beds.

At the moment that area is a bit of a wasteland of tree stumps, grass, weeds, council slabs and broken bricks. Tree roots have upset the slabs they are all over the shop. I started trying to dig out tree stumps, slabs and mortar by hand but its absolutely heartbreaking and will be a good 3 or 4 skips. Wondering if the hard graft is really necessary.

If I build the gabion wall at around the 20m point down the garden (probably will have a concrete footing as its heavy clay soil) can I just backfill with type 1 (prob about 20 ton) on top of all this rubbish, compact, put down a weed membrane and then decorative gravel? Or is that cowboy territory?

[Tony McC]

Remove as much of the organic matter as you can before backfilling with Type 1 or some other suitable aggregate (build up in 150mm layers each thoroughly compacted before placing the next). The tree stumps are better removed but, if this area is just to be deco gravel, then it's not too much of a problem if they stay in place as long as they are dead.

They'll rot over time, and the backfill/gravel will settle but it's easy enough to top up as and when necessary.