Content asset · lawn care
The lawn guide: why mowing alone never gives you a good lawn
Most tired British lawns aren't tired because nobody mows them. They're tired because mowing is the only thing that ever happens to them. Here's the rest of it — the handful of jobs that actually decide whether grass comes back thick each spring, and roughly when to do them in Hertfordshire.
01
Cut high, cut often
The single most common mistake is cutting too short. Short grass has short roots, dries out first in July and lets weeds and moss straight in. Take a third of the leaf off at a time, more often — weekly or fortnightly through the growing season — and raise the blades again in high summer and for the last cuts of the year. A lawn cut properly at 35–40mm outperforms the same lawn scalped at 20mm every time.
02
Edge it
Nothing makes a middling lawn look cared for faster than a clean edge against the beds and paths. It's five minutes a visit, it stops grass creeping into borders, and it's the difference people notice from the kitchen window without ever knowing why.
03
Scarify out the thatch
Under most lawns is a spongy mat of dead stems and moss. Past about a centimetre it holds water at the surface, starves the roots of air and grows more moss. Scarifying rakes it out. It looks brutal for a fortnight and then the lawn thickens up. Once a year on most gardens, spring or early autumn — twice on a lawn that's been neglected for years.
04
Aerate compacted ground
Clay-leaning Hertfordshire soil, a garden that's walked on, and years of mowing all compact the ground. Water then sits on top instead of going down. Punching holes through it — hollow-tining or spiking — opens it up so roots go deep and puddles stop forming in the same three places every winter. Autumn is the usual window, on soil that's moist rather than baked or sodden.
05
Overseed the thin patches
Straight after scarifying and aerating, seed goes into the gaps you've just opened. That's the whole trick: seed needs contact with soil, not thatch. Overseeding once or twice a year is how a lawn quietly gets thicker rather than slowly balder, and thick grass crowds weeds out without anyone reaching for a chemical.
06
Know when the answer is new turf
Sometimes a lawn is past repairing — the levels are wrong, the ground is builder's rubble, or there's more moss than grass. Then it's better to strip it, prepare the ground properly and lay fresh turf, ideally in autumn when the soil is warm and the rain is reliable. We'll lay Astroturf too if that's genuinely what you want, though we do try to avoid plastic in the garden if we can.
The exception
If it's a wildflower or clover lawn, ignore most of the above
A wildflower or clover lawn is a different thing with different rules. It gets cut once a year, after the flowering and seeding is done, and the arisings come off so the soil stays poor — fertile ground grows grass, and grass beats wildflowers. No scarifying, no feeding, no weekly stripes. If you've got one, it's an asset: it's the best thing in the garden for bees and it's less work than a lawn, not more.
The kit
A word on the machines
We run Ego battery mowers on most lawns. It isn't a green badge for its own sake — the cut is cleaner, the noise is a fraction of a petrol machine on a Saturday morning, and nobody has to sit in the garden afterwards breathing two-stroke. On very long or wet grass we'll still reach for something with more muscle, and a badly overgrown lawn gets strimmed down first before any mower goes near it.
If your lawn is thin, mossy or waterlogged in the same corner every winter, it's almost always one of the five jobs above that's missing. Ring Will and he'll tell you which one — and whether it's worth doing this month or worth waiting for autumn.
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