If your lawn has slowed almost to a standstill since the warm, dry weather arrived, the grass is not failing. It is protecting itself. Most garden lawns are built from cool-season grasses such as perennial ryegrass, the fescues and bent,…
If pale, broad-leaved tufts are standing proud of an otherwise fine lawn within a day or two of mowing, you are looking at coarse grass invading your sward. The reason it suddenly stands out in summer is that these tougher…
A single water butt fed from a downpipe can capture hundreds of litres from one heavy shower, and that stored water is free, untreated, and ready for the driest weeks of summer when the tap is the last place you…
If broad rosettes of oval leaves are pressing themselves flat against your grass and shrugging off every pass of the mower, you are almost certainly dealing with plantain. The quickest fix for a handful of plants is to lever each…
Half a bag of grass seed left over after patching the lawn is worth keeping, because stored properly it will still germinate well next year and the year after. Stored badly, it can be all but dead within a single…
If small mounds of fine soil shaped like tiny volcanoes have appeared scattered across your lawn, each with a neat hole at the centre, and you have noticed small orange or brown bees flying low over the grass on warm…
If a patch of your lawn has been coated overnight in something that looks like grey ash, yellow scrambled egg, or a frothy beige crust climbing up the grass blades, the short answer is this: it is slime mould, it…
When a dry spell sets in, the brown rarely starts in the middle of the lawn. It creeps in from the edges first, the strips running alongside the path, the driveway and the patio, while the centre of the lawn…
You feed the lawn expecting an even flush of green, and a week later the grass tells a different story: dark green bands running next to pale yellow ones, or a tartan pattern of stripes that follows the exact path…
The quickest way to know whether your lawn needs water costs nothing and takes about ten seconds. Walk in a straight line across the grass, then turn around and look at your tracks. If the blades spring back upright almost…
