First, About "Topsoil"
Topsoil is not a recipe. It is a description of where soil came from, the top layer of ground, and it tells you nothing reliable about what is in the bag or the pile.
The same is true of "triple mix." It usually means soil, sand, and compost in some proportion, but the proportion is up to whoever mixed it, and so is the quality of the three ingredients. Two triple mixes from two yards can behave completely differently in the same bed.
This is why our soils are named after the job rather than the recipe. It is less romantic and much easier to buy correctly.
The Four Soils, and What Each Is For
[Garden Soil Mix](/products/garden-soil-mix) is the rich one. It is built for growing: raised beds, vegetable gardens, flower borders, and anywhere you are planting into the soil rather than on top of it. If you are filling a bed, this is the default.
[Lawn Soil Mix](/products/lawn-soil-mix) is sandier and leaner on purpose. Grass roots want drainage and a firm surface, not richness, and a lawn built on garden soil stays soggy and grows lush weak growth. Use this under seed and under sod.
[Sandy Loam](/products/sandy-loam-prince-george) is the broad-acre version of the same idea. Building up a large lawn area or regrading a yard, where you need volume and the finished surface is going to be grass.
[Sandy Fill](/products/sandy-fill) is not a growing soil at all. It is for depth: filling a low spot, raising a grade, getting the level up before the good material goes on top. Nothing should be planted directly into it.
The Expensive Mistake
Filling a deep hole with garden soil.
If you need to raise an area by a foot, only the top few inches do any growing. Everything below that is structure. Using a rich screened soil for the whole depth costs several times what the same job costs with fill underneath and good soil on top, and the plants cannot tell the difference.
The rule: cheap material for depth, good material for the top.
Which One for Flower Beds
Garden Soil Mix, at the depth the plants need.
For a new bed, work it in to about 12 inches. For an established bed that has gone tired, 2 to 3 inches worked into the top is usually enough to bring it back, and you can improve that further with mushroom manure mixed through.
For an established bed you are just tidying, that is a mulch job, not a soil job.
Which One for Vegetables
Garden Soil Mix, 10 to 12 inches deep.
Do not fill a vegetable bed with straight compost, and do not fill it with lawn soil. One is too rich and holds too much water; the other is too lean to feed anything. How much soil for a raised bed covers the amounts.
Which One Under Grass
Lawn Soil Mix for a normal yard, Sandy Loam if the area is large enough that volume is the main concern. Best soil for a new lawn goes through the full preparation.
Working Out How Much
All four are sold by the cubic yard. The soil calculator turns the area and the depth into an amount, and adds the allowance for settling, which bulk soil genuinely needs. Fresh screened soil is airy, and it drops by roughly a tenth once it has been watered in.
Bottom line: garden soil grows things, lawn soil grows grass, sandy loam builds grades, and fill just takes up space. Buy for the job, and never pay growing-soil prices for depth.
