This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

For painters, every piece of work starts with a fresh canvas.

Gardening, on the other hand, is one art form where we rarely get to start from scratch.

We generally stumble into spring with the results of last season’s garden to deal with. A soil deficiency, a patch of goutweed or twitch grass, a juniper bush which got out of hand — these issues don’t go away over the winter.

That’s why it is fun to start with a blank canvas. For most gardeners, the lawn is one place to look to when you want to start from scratch with a new garden bed or planting project.

Carefully consider what you want to grow: If you want to grow tomatoes or vegetables, you need to maximize sun exposure. How is this going to look in the context of your yard? Veggie gardens can be a weedy mess or made beautiful with additional work. Whatever your vision, it is important to think about it in the context of your overall landscape design.

Replacing grass with garden: The idea of shaving back on the lawn area to create more garden beds is a growing trend (pun intended).

Many homeowners still love their lawns but are giving up some lawn area to grow pollinator gardens, food or to plant some trees and shrubs. Whatever your reason for reducing the lawn in favour of dirt, here are some ideas for turning a patch of grass into a new garden bed, as Ben did recently when his landlady gave the green light to put in a veggie garden in their side yard:

To kill grass where you wish to create a new planting bed, place corrugated cardboard two layers thick over the existing grass and anchor it with bricks or rocks. Alternatively, you could use newspaper, about 20 pages thick (after you have removed our column for future reference), or black plastic, at least six millimetres thick. Leave for six weeks to “bake” the grass — roots and all.

After existing grass has died, use a sharp spade to cut under the old grass and remove the sod from the soil to a depth of about 7 1/2 centimetres. Peel up this old grass and dump it in your compost, upside down; or place it upside down in the bottom of the bed you excavate. Either way, dead grass has value as a natural soil amendment.

If the subsoil in your yard is solid clay, you will have to dig it out using a pick, sharp shovel or spade, at least 30 cm deep. Dispose of the waste clay, soil or gravel.

Anyone can read Conversations, but to contribute, you should be registered Torstar account holder. If you do not yet have a Torstar account, you can create one now (it is free)

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com