We want to get rid of our front lawn, which is not a very well maintained lawn. It's basically full of wild grass and weeds. There's also a big tree amongst the grass. We have very dense soil because we live in Los Angeles and we rarely water the lawn.
We know that we need to kill the grass and then remove a number of inches of the top before we can start our landscaping project.
We've been doing research and some sources say that it might be easier to remove the top layer when the grass when is actually healthy. Initially we were planning on just cover our lawn with some large tarps that we have to kill everything and then remove the top.
For our landscaping project we are going to plant some ground cover, inset some stones for a path, add some flowers, native plants, and succulents.
Should we kill the lawn first before we remove the top layer?