George Howson

The Glossy Yellow Weed That Roots Itself as It Crawls You can pick creeping buttercup out of a lawn from across the garden. Look for glossy yellow flowers sitting above low, flat stems that fan out in every direction. Each…

RHS advisers say clover is a wildflower, not a weed, and that it makes its own nitrogen and stays green when the grass around it struggles. Patches of clover often point to thin, hungry or compacted grass, and many lawn…

Soak the soil round each dandelion, wait half an hour, then lever out the whole taproot with a narrow weeding tool, as any piece left behind can grow a new plant. Fill the hole straight away and keep the grass…

The black-green jelly and green film appearing on wet lawns are algae and a jelly-like organism called Nostoc, and they take hold only where the grass has already thinned and the ground stays wet. Skimming the growth off with a…

Wet grass bends away from the blade and tears instead of cutting cleanly, leaving a ragged, pale surface that loses water fast and gives lawn disease an easy way in. Mower wheels sink into soft, rain-soaked ground and drag grass…

The Leaves Are Not Feeding Your Lawn, They Are Smothering It There is a comfortable belief that fallen leaves left on the grass will rot down over winter and feed the lawn, so the tidy thing to do is nothing.…

Most lawn grasses want four to six hours of direct sun a day, and a thick tree canopy can block up to 95 per cent of it, so thin grass under a tree is a light problem, not a seed…