The Good Health Guide

By Susie Helme, garden designer.
Bet you were surprised to see to see your lawn recover after the summer drought! I was. With these autumn downpours, grass has proven its resilience and is greening up with a vengeance. But take a close-up look. Especially around the edges giving onto the borders, a lot of that beautiful green you’re looking at is actually moss. The drought killed off some of the buttercups -a small blessing, perhaps - but the moss survived in dormant form to fill up all the dead patches in this wet weather. It may look nice now, but moss prepares the ground for weeds to follow.

I give my customers’ lawns a high-nitrogen Spring Feed in March and May (don’t use in autumn) and a high-potassium Autumn Feed in September (don’t use in spring and summer), and these fertilisers contain weed and moss killer. With regular mowing, I find them adequate for weeds; but they never get all the moss. So I put down Lawn Sand, especially around the edges, every time I mow. The sand also helps to aerate the lawn. Personally, I’m not a fan of raking away moss. I think it only encourages spore dispersal, and you always pull away soil too, and that causes unevenness.

Autumn is the time to aerate, if you have the will and the muscle, but use a hollow-tined tool. Then sprinkle on and brush in a Top Dressing (3 parts sand loam/6 parts sharp sand (horticultural, not builder’s)/1part leaf mould). If aerating sounds too ambitious, applying Top Dressing alone helps. And pay special attention to bald and sunken patches. If you use a Flymo that doesn’t collect the clippings, mow often so the clippings won’t form clumps. Large clumps of grass clippings on the lawn causes unevenness and more dead patches for moss to grow into.

Grass will spread from seed in these dead patches, but the strongest, greenest, densest growth is the lateral growth that shoots anew from nodes at the base of the blades each time you mow. So keep your grass mown, even at this time of year; never let it get higher than a few inches. Lawns are compsed of many species of grass (some shade-loving, some drought-tolerant etc), and leaving grass long encourages the tougher, less desirable species. If you should let your grass get knee-high, it will take at least one year to get it back in good shape, and lots more labour (feeding, raking, aerating, levelling, reseeding, etc) than is involved in simply pushing the mower around.

Garden Tips: Lawns

• Spring feed in March, May
• Autumn feed in September
• Aerate and/or Top Dress in autumn
• Keep grass mown
• Don’t leave clippings in clumps on grass
• Kill moss regularly

 Design Tips: Lawns

• Keep edges and stepping stones tightly clipped
• Include paths where people want to cross the lawn
• Don’t have tight angles of lawn
• Don’t have grass at entrances
• Don’t carry lawn to boundaries; use planting at borders
• Some hard edging to lawn looks best and makes it easier to mow

Susie Helme Gardens
susiehelme@blueyonder.co.uk