My most recent customers garden

Well done to the lady! She has a lovely garden :)) and still a good size. :))))

This isn't unlike how I envision our garden looking...with shaped borders, grass and patio next to the house. Your lady customer has done a fine job of planting.

What a lovely garden.

The grass looks like a bowling green AM was it good to start with or did you have to reseed it ?

It was pretty good to start with Amy. The mower I use has a heavy roller and that gives the bowling green stripes.

It's looking good , we had to scarify ours in the spring it was full of moss , it's looking much better now but it looked awful at the time , we took barrrow loads of moss off !

Looking nice AM, looking nice.

Other than removing the moss did you do anything further to the lawn Amy. If you didn't the moss will return!

we put lawn sand on it AM , is that o.k ?

Yes. The lawn sand will probably include a moss killer but to stop moss returning you need to try to cure the reasons why moss is appearing in the first place.

Here's something I wrote recently about lawncare . I hope you find it helpful.

Moss:-

Moss is caused primarily by bad drainage and to a lesser extent shade. Scarifying and applying moss killer will temporarily remove moss but it will reappear if the underlying cause is not dealt with.

To improve poor drainage aeriate the lawn. You can use a garden fork stuck into the lawn at 4 inch intervals and waggled about to increase the size of the holes. Apply lawn sand which will fall down the holes and leave semi permanent drainage channels.

It is possible to hire a machine to do this as ,with anything other than a very small lawn ,it's hard and tedious work!

Scarification of the lawn using either a leaf rake or a mechanical scarifier will remove dead grass and moss .This gives the grass chance to grow well. Also don't set the mower too low,particularly in early spring and autumn as this allows the longer grass to "drown out" the moss.

Also feed the lawn with a spring weed and feed in spring and an autumn feed in autumn.( They have different chemical compositions. The spring feed will make the grass grow and the autumn feed is designed to improve the roots.)

You can now buy grass seed grown to cope well with shade

WEEDS

Personally I don't care much about weeds and I never use weed killer on my lawn . I love daisies in the lawn and remove the odd dandelion by hand.My lawn has loads of clover in it which attracts insects and fixes nitrogen so a fertiliser isn't required. A clover filled lawn stays green much longer in drought conditions.

To getting a bowling green lawn requires quite a bit of work which I have to do for my more lawn obsessed customers but for me a well cut green lawn with daisies and clover makes me happy.

If you are happy to use weed killer the best to apply to a lawn is Verdone Extra which is available at most DIY sheds. Water it on once a year and you'll have a weed free lawn ( Verdone doesn't feed the lawn) so you'll also need to apply a lawn feed .

Important - Do not apply weed killer or fertilisers until the grass is growing strongly

The lawn was in a bad condition when we moved here AM , We do aerate it etc. I think our main problem could be the trees all round as you say the shade is a contributing factor , it is improving with each year and is much better than it was ..... thanks for the infomation I will take notes from it ..... :o)

A beautiful garden :-))

I have a square lawn to renew this spring. you could give me some ideas. i will take a picture from above. you have done a good job for your customer. I like it very much. ciao David