Pride in your garden

Pride in your garden

You don’t have to have a big garden to have something of envy, small gardens can be just perfect and give you the outdoor living space you want for you and your family to enjoy. What’s important is that it works in a way for what you want to do and how you want to use it.

Earlier this week I spent some time with Kathryn chatting about her Swanwick garden and the things she enjoys and loves about gardening. She’s a keen and avid gardener and takes great pride in her garden and it looks stunning as you can see.

The center piece of the back garden is a delightful 20 year old Acer (see photo right) which is beautifully shaped but also changes colour as the season progresses – giving the garden a different central colour theme towards summer.

Acers are great for creating a focal point and one that changes colour and has a interesting shape is definitely something to be proud of.

A Healthy Lawn

The lawn after it had been scarified and mowed – Perfectly shows off the beautiful Acer and it’s sumptuous cast shadow on the lawn!

Her garden is quite narrow at the back and long and has hedges on either side which obviously creates a certain amount of shade throughout the day.

The lawn has a continual “moss” issue which a lot of gardens have even though the lawn is on a slight gradient and drains well.

Areas nearer to hedges tend not to get the same light and they can be early indicators of poor lawn health – if they get dry, mossy and patchy.

One of the key aspects of ensuring a healthy lawn is as you remove material – moss, weeds etc. and applying chemical treatments that it gets replaced with new grass seed or, in extreme areas, re-turfing. Any type of treatment be it, chemical or physical (like scarifying) is attempting to remove something. If your lawn needs a helping hand, have a quick read through my article on scarifying for some hints and tips.

Lawns can get very dry and patchy with successive treatments – as shown below in this small patch (photo left).

A well drained lawn with moss and successive treatments needs something putting back in. If the lawn gets very dry, you can encourage growth with regular watering to protect the optimal growing conditions and offer an occasional feed too.

A patch like this can be spike aerated and using a combination of a nutrient rich soil dressing and new grass seed will help bring it back to life. Give new seeded areas upto 5 weeks growth to establish.

Keep the grass a reasonable length too. There’s a misconception that moss can be tackled with very short grass – it’s not a good strategy for treatment long term – keeping the lawn healthy and the soil it grows on is. A reasonable length gives the lawn it’s colour, the lushness and protects the soil from direct sunlight and drying out.

If your lawn is patchy – it’s time to add something back in to rejuvenate it.