Question
I was elated to see the question that you were asked about laying a gravel lawn. But you replied with a question about the use of their space (it was growing moss and they wanted to just gravel it in...)  With the exception of a few planted/garden spots and the patio, we want to gravel our whole back yard.  It is only about 11mx6m and is a mess of weeds at the moment. Even if it was grassy it would not be worth the mowing!  How to start this?  We do want to remove all weeds and lay weed barrier cloth. What are some of the considerations that we (amateurs!) might not have thought about in laying an area of gravel like this?
Thank you!
Adam and Cassi

Answer
Adam,
You have two choices here. Either use weed killer first,then lay down black plastic on the whole yard using rolls of black plastic(usually found in the paint section at retail stores and very inexpensive)and metal garden staples.Look at Lowes or Home Depot for quantity of these.Then lay your gravel over the plastic.

Or you can just use weed killer then gravel the whole thing. The problem with that is you will have to spray weeds when they come up through the gravel.It isn't a matter of IF it is WHEN they will come up. In the growing season you will be spraying weeds about every 2 weeks or so.In the long run I would go with the black plastic.You will have practically no maintenance and then you could have raised beds intead of beds directly planted in the gravel and soil beneath,which it sounds as if your soil is not too good anyway,so raised beds are the way to go in your situation.
Hope this has been informative to you.Good luck with your project!