Lawn Care

Quick Answer The Hayter Osprey 46 is one of the best petrol lawn mowers for medium-sized UK gardens up to 500m². Built in Britain with a steel deck, Briggs and Stratton engine, and Hayter’s excellent Easy-Wash system, it delivers a sharp, consistent cut. The Autodrive version is the one to buy: the fixed 2mph drive […]

Quick Answer Lawn edging is a strip of metal, plastic, brick, or timber that creates a permanent barrier between your lawn and flower beds. Installed correctly to a depth of 10–15cm, it prevents grass creeping into borders, eliminates the need for a half-moon edger, and allows a mower to pass over the top without strimming. […]

After twenty years of designing gardens professionally and working on everything from inner-city courtyard lawns to large estate turf, I have seen every cause of yellow and patchy grass the UK climate can throw at a lawn. This guide runs through all of them, shows you how to identify which one is affecting your lawn, […]

BBC Garden Rescue designer Lee Burkhill explains how to get rid of garden weeds organically — which tools work, why homemade remedies fail, and how to stop weeds coming back.

Here’s the thing about lawn weeds that drives most gardeners completely bonkers: you can’t treat what you can’t identify as a lawn weed. I’ve lost count of how many times clients have told me they’ve been battling “that yellow flowery thing” or “the spreading green stuff” with completely the wrong treatment. It’s like trying to […]

Quick Answer Scarify your lawn in early autumn (September to October) once the grass is growing well but weed pressure is falling. Mow short first, set blades 2 to 3mm into the soil, make two passes at 45 degrees to each other, then overseed immediately at 15 to 35 grams per square metre and water […]

Compaction is the silent killer of UK lawns. It happens gradually, almost invisibly, through nothing more dramatic than regular foot traffic, the weight of a mower going back and forth, and the natural settling of soil over time. By the time you notice the symptoms, including waterlogging after rain, patchy moss colonies, and grass that […]

I have overseeded dozens of lawns over my career, both in my own garden and on client projects. The results never fail to impress. A lawn that looked beyond saving in March, with bare patches, thin coverage, and that general air of defeat that sets in after a hard UK winter, can look genuinely lush […]

When you think of meadows, you may think of acres of rolling hillside, Julie Andrews, and lazy summer days. However, the wildflower meadow is under threat from the overdevelopment of green spaces. So now, a number of gardeners are looking to recreate smaller versions of these in their own gardens, helping to create a refuge […]

Quick Answer: Getting Rid of Leather Jackets What kills leather jackets in lawns? Nematodes (Steinernema feltiae) applied in late summer or early autumn are the most effective organic treatment, killing leatherjacket larvae within 2 weeks. Manual removal by encouraging birds, improving drainage, and scarifying heavily infested areas also works, but is less effective for large […]