What is Top Soil?

Posted: 8th February 2023 | Author: Jamie Brown

What is Top Soil?

Tackling a garden project? You’ll need to make sure you’re using the right kind of soil or compost for the right purpose. In this guide, we’ll look at top soil, exploring what it is and how best to use it. And of course, how it’s different from other garden soils and composts.

The first thing to know is that top soil is the uppermost layer of soil, as its name would suggest. It’s formed over tens if not hundreds of years on the earth’s surface. Over this time, all kinds of vegetation, leaves and decomposing organic matter is blended into it. This makes it packed full of organic minerals and nutrients, which is why it’s such an important soil for growing plants.

What is top soil used for?

Top soil is one of the most important products within gardening and landscaping products. It has a number of different uses, most of them related to improving soil quality and nourishing plants. However, top soil can also have some other uses, such as levelling out uneven ground and improving drainage.

Let’s take a look at some of the many uses of top soil in a little more detail:

• Improving soil quality. If the space you’re working on has poor or damaged soil, a layer of good quality top soil can work wonders. You’ll also need it if you’re creating a garden in an outdoor area which has no soil, such as a patio, courtyard or paved area. Garden experts often need to use topsoil when improving the gardens of new build homes, where the natural topsoil has been stripped away during construction.
• Lawns. One of the most common uses of topsoil is for lawns. It can provide a base for laying turf or sowing grass seed, or for helping to repair damaged lawns.
• New raised plant beds. Want to grow vegetables or create a new flower bed? If you have a paved garden with no or limited access to soil, top soil offers a solution. Once you’ve built raised beds, you can simply fill with nutrient-rich top soil (although you may also need some compost as well). This creates a fertile environment for growing plants, vegetables, flowers, herbs and much more.
• Borders. Top soil is a popular choice for gardeners creating new borders within their outdoor space. For example, a border surrounding the garden or along the side of a path. It provides a good growing bed for flowers, smaller shrubs, perennials and other plants.
• Improving soil drainage. Lastly but just as importantly, you can use top soil to improve the quality of soil drainage. If you’re working on land that tends to hold a lot of water, a sandy top soil can help excess water to drain more freely. This is good news for plants, as it helps to avoid water logging around the roots.

If you’re creating a new garden or landscaping project from scratch, you’re going to need good quality top soil. And you’ll need a lot of it, so it’s important to find a good, reliable supplier.

Is top soil the same as compost?

When choosing the right materials to use in your garden, it’s easy to confuse top soil and compost. Not everyone knows the difference between the two. Top soil and compost do have similarities, but they’re not the same thing.

Compost is made up of decaying plant material. It’s a natural fertiliser, which is added to soil to improve its quality, structure and drainage capabilities.

Top soil is a growing medium, while compost can be considered to be a soil amendment or conditioner.

Rather than choosing one or the other for your gardening or landscaping project, it’s likely that you’ll need to use both. Top soil will be your foundation or base layer, and you’ll add compost where needed to enrich the soil and help plants to flourish.

You can even find top soil which contains compost, effectively doing two jobs in one.

How to use top soil

There are a few different ways to use top soil, depending on the project you have in mind. Here are some handy tips to remember:

• If you’re using top soil to lay a lawn, you’ll need at least 10 cm (4 inches) of top soil underneath.
• For creating new plant beds, you’ll need enough top soil to achieve a depth of at least 20 cm (8 inches) or more.

To work out how much you need, use our handy top soil calculator.

Top soil also comes in a few different grades - such as economy, general purpose or premium. Economy is often unscreened, which means it can contain lots of stones, weeds, roots and perhaps even contaminants. It’s useful for landscaping projects though, where you need to build up volume.

General purpose top soil is good for making new beds or borders, as well as providing a base for lawns. Choose a finer grade though for top dressing lawns.

Premium top soil, meanwhile, is ideal for high quality flower borders and beds. It’s high in fertility and shouldn’t contain any weed seeds, although of course it will cost more.

The Author: Jamie Brown

From my early working life as a labourer, then becoming a builder and a property developer, I have been buying and using building materials for over 25 years. I set about to start a builders merchant which can offer high-quality products and significant savings along with speedy delivery to keep your sites moving. Still having a foot in the construction industry on my own property, I always make sure the products we sell are up to our high standards which is important for us to keep a great image for the company and superior reputation to supply quality!

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