Hi there

I know little or nothing about lawns (or gardening in general) so I am seeking some advice.

We moved into our current house about 3 years ago. The back garden had been monoblocked over. It sloped downhill quite steeply, away from the house.

Both the monoblock and the slope were bad for our young kids, so I ripped up the monoblock, built a small retaining wall at the end of the slope, and filled the whole area with 12 tons of top soil.

I then turfed the whole area (it's about 7 meters by 5 meters).

I also drilled 6 or so holes in the retaining wall for drainage. When it rains a lot I can see water coming out of these, so they are working...but perhaps 6 or so isn't enough? The ground does seem to be pretty squelchy, but it would do, as it's been wet on and off recently.

It all looked great once the sections of turn had knitted together.

Anyway, fast forward to a few weeks ago, and there was a lot of dead grass (yellow coloured, straw textured) so I read a little about what to do.

I then scarified the whole area (hard work!), forked it all to a depth of about 4-6 inches, and the stuck about 2 kilos of grass seed over the whole lawn, as evenly as I could. I also raked in a bag of general purpose compost spread over the whole lawn (not very much, but it was all I has in the shed at the time!)

That was 16 days ago. The weather here (Scotland) has been mixed since then (surprise, surprise!). Some nice days verging on warm, some cold, some raining. The grass seed is still sitting there, in contact with the bare earth between the remaining grass growth, but shows no sign of actually doing anything.

Have I given it enough time?

What else should I be doing?

All comments welcome.

Cheers,
Keith.