How to Remove Gravel From a Yard

The short version

To remove gravel from a yard, rake the loose stone into piles, scoop it into a wheelbarrow with a flat shovel, and sift the last stony layer of soil through a hardware cloth screen. Then pull up any landscape fabric and edging, and rebuild the soil before you seed, sod or plant.

A small path or bed needs only hand tools. A gravel driveway or a large rock yard is a job for a rented skid steer or mini excavator, plus a plan for hauling several tons of stone.

Work out how much gravel you have

Multiply the length of the area by its width to get square feet. Then dig a few small test holes with a trowel to find the depth, because gravel is rarely spread evenly. Divide the depth in inches by 12 to get feet, multiply by the square footage to get cubic feet, and divide by 27 to get cubic yards.

A cubic yard of loose gravel weighs about 2,565 pounds, close to 1.3 tons. Wet stone is heavier, up to about 120 pounds per cubic foot. A 10 by 20 foot area with 3 inches of gravel holds about 1.85 cubic yards, or roughly 4,750 pounds.

For each 100 square feet, expect roughly this much.

Pick tools for the size of the job

Hand tools cover most beds, paths and small patios. Once the total runs to several cubic yards, or the stone is packed hard like an old driveway base, a machine can save days of shoveling.

Before renting a machine, measure your gate to be sure it fits, and flag sprinkler heads, valve boxes and any low-voltage lighting cable you know about.

Rake, shovel and haul the top layer

Work in strips about as wide as your rake. Pull the stone into piles with a steel bow rake, keeping the teeth shallow so you move gravel rather than soil. A flat or square shovel slides along the base and lifts stone cleanly, where a pointed shovel tends to dig in.

Load the wheelbarrow only partway, since a full barrow of gravel tips easily, and lay plywood across any lawn you cross so the wheel does not rut it.

Old rock beds often hold more than stone. Wind blows fine soil into the gaps along with weed seeds, so after a few years the gravel sits in a layer of silt laced with roots. Expect that layer to come up slowly and to need sifting.

Sift the gravel mixed into soil

The bottom layer is often a blend of stone and soil, and shoveling it all away throws out good dirt. A sifting screen separates the two. A simple frame of 1 by 2 inch boards with hardware cloth screwed and glued between them, sized to rest across the top of a wheelbarrow, is a design gardeners use for compost. For stony soil, which is much heavier, load one shovelful at a time.

Choose the mesh to suit the gravel. Half-inch hardware cloth holds back stone larger than half an inch, and quarter-inch mesh catches smaller pea-size gravel. Shovel the mix onto the screen, shake it or rub it with a gloved hand, and let the soil fall into the barrow while the stones stay on top.

Sift when the ground is fairly dry, since wet soil clings to stone, and keep the screened soil for the new beds or lawn.

Pull up landscape fabric and edging

Many rock beds sit on landscape fabric. Over time its pores trap dirt, and weed roots grow into and through it, so pulling a weed can tear up a piece of the sheet. Fabric under rock also limits water and air movement into the soil, which is one more reason to take it out before you plant.

Pull the landscape pins or staples first. Cut the fabric into strips a few feet wide with a utility knife and roll each strip as you lift it. Where roots hold it down, cut around the clump and dig it out separately. Bag the fabric for the trash and keep scraps out of your gravel pile.

Plastic, metal or stone edging usually sits on stakes or in a shallow trench. Pull the stakes with pliers or a pry bar and lift the edging out in sections. Straight metal edging can be cleaned and reused around the new beds.

Call 811 before you dig below the gravel

Raking loose stone off the surface by hand is unlikely to reach buried lines. Scraping or lifting stone with a skid steer or mini excavator, digging out the stony soil layer, leveling, trenching or planting can, and some states treat any machine work that moves earth or rock as excavation. In the US, contact 811 before any machine work and before you go into the soil.

811 is the free national before-you-dig service. Call 811 or make an online request a few business days before you dig, and local utilities will mark the approximate location of their buried lines with paint or flags. They mark only lines the utilities own. Private lines that you or a past owner installed, such as lighting cable, sprinkler lines, a gas line to a grill or power to a shed, are not marked, so hire a private locator if you have them. Waiting periods vary by state, and you can find your state's process on the official 811 before-you-dig site (opens in a new tab).

Some utility lines are buried shallow, so every digging project needs a request regardless of depth. Once the marks are down, keep digging tools 18 to 24 inches away from each side of them.

Reuse, give away or dispose of the gravel

Clean gravel is useful. You can top up a driveway or path, fill a splash area under a downspout, or set it aside for a future project. Rinse it in the sifting screen with a hose if it carries soil.

Stone you do not want is easy to give away. Offer it free locally and let the person who takes it bring a truck and shovels.

Disposal rules vary by city and county, so call your local solid waste office before you load anything. Some curbside yard waste programs refuse rocks and dirt, and some transfer stations accept rock only as clean fill, which means stone, dirt, concrete and similar material with no plants, roots or garbage mixed in. If you rent a container, tell the company it is for rock and ask about weight limits before you fill it.

Prepare the ground for grass or beds

Rake out the remaining stone and any buried debris rather than covering it, since debris buried under new soil can cause problems for grass later. A soil test before you plant tells you what the ground needs.

For a lawn, aim for six inches or more of well-prepared soil, and work in screened soil or compost where the old gravel layer left the ground thin. A lawn roller or weighted drag will firm a fluffy surface before you seed or lay sod.

Grade the soil away from the house as you go. The model residential building code calls for the ground to fall at least 6 inches within the first 10 feet from the foundation, so rain runs away from the walls. Leave at least 6 inches of foundation wall showing above the new soil, or 4 inches where the wall has masonry veneer. If your basement already gets damp after rain, our guide on how to lower humidity in your house covers what else to check.

If the gravel ringed an outdoor air conditioner, keep new soil, mulch and plants back from the cabinet so air can move freely, as described in our air conditioner maintenance guide. When the new grass is ready for its first cut and a mower that sat all season will not fire, see what to check when a lawn mower cranks but won't start.

Questions people ask