How to remove rock garden?

[Aaron]

Mt wife and I have recently purchased a home that had (at some point) a large area (maybe 30' by 25') which was once a rock garden (no rock bigger than 3"). With no knowledge of rock gardens (or gardening in general), it would appear that it hasn't been taken care of in many, many years. We would both rather restore the space to grass as the rest of the lawn is absolutely beautiful, and we would like to utilize the space. Does anyone have any suggestions as I have searched endlessly for weeks in both Google and other sites. Maybe I'm not coming up with the correct key-words, but I have yet to find anything informative. I also realize that this may be a project better left for my checkbook, but I would still like to know exactly what needs to be done. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

[StanB]

A rake, shovel, and wheelbarrow?

[Jane]

My landscape book discourages rock gardens unless you really want it since picking the rocks back up in nothing but labor. In other words, there really no easy way to remove them.

[Beecrofter]

Plenty of folks are on the lookout for rocks for their own gardens, walls, landscape. Sad that the Biff and Muffy landscape is an endless expanse of turfgrass.

[J. Del Col]

A frontloader( aka a Bobcat (tm) and a dump truck. If you try to remove it by hand, remember, rocks are heavy, and gravity works. Wear safety shoes.

J. Del Col

[Hal]

Depending on where you are river rocks can be sold by the pound and some garden pond builders use them to line streams to hide the black liner. Might be worthwhile to do a search for garden ponds or koi ponds in your area and talk to the club members.

I must warn you about these people, they might try to convince you the space you are uncovering would make a nice pond site and the rocks a big beautiful water fall.

Regards,

Hal

[Janet Baraclough..]

The message from [e-mail] (J. Del Col) contains these words:

He's talking about pebbles, "no bigger than three-inch rocks", not damn great boulders !!!!!

Janet

[Shell]

We had a neighbor who had a front yard of those white marble chips. The people who bought the house when they moved removed the rocks by renting one of those tiny buldozers and loading up the bed of thier pickup truck. Don't know where they dumped the rocks but I do know the rock layer was only about

5 inches thick and once the front yard was free of rocks and levele they put in some topsoil and had turf put down. Its a nice green yard now and you'd never know it used to be white rocks, The removal took them about 2 days.