Follow our simple advice and achieve that lush green lawn with ease this summer.

Lawn Care For Beginners

Lawn care is straightforward with the right information. From seasonal timing to ensuring the right grass height, here are a few tips to get you started.

Using The Right Type of Lawn Mower

There are various different types of lawn mower on the market today - each with a range of different benefits to you and your lawn.

• Hover mowers : These are small compact lawn mowers that float on a cushion of air. These are ideal for irregular shaped lawns, or lawns with slopes. Because they float on a cushion of air, they are easier to move side to side and backwards and forwards than traditional wheeled lawn mowers.

• Rotary lawn mowers : Often referred to wheeled lawn mowers, these lawn mowers are often best used for larger gardens. They can cut close to edges, and petrol machines sometimes come with a mulch plug help create tiny grass clippings to naturally fertilise your lawn.

• Robot lawn mowers : Never ever cut the grass, or empty a grass box again. With a robotic lawn mower, they automatically cut the grass for you so you don't have to. They cut the grass little and often, so that there are no visible grass clippings which then quickly breakdown and add nutrients back into the soil.

Use The Correct Cutting Height

English gardeners tend to prefer to have their lawns cut quite short. However, you need to make sure that you don’t cut off too much of the length of your grass in one go. When first mowing your lawn, avoid cutting more than 20% off the top of your grass at once. Grass is a living organism, and lasting damage can occur if it’s cut too short. To achieve the grass height you’d like, it’s better to reduce the cutting height gradually over a few weeks to minimise stress and damage to your lawn. 

Use A Sharp Lawn Mower Blade

A blunted blade will struggle to cut your grass – tearing and ripping it from the ground. By contrast, a sharp blade will give you a clean cut and a much neater lawn. For best results, sharpen your lawn mower blades in between uses, this avoids the build-up of debris and increases their lifespan. Purchase a new genuine blade for your Flymo lawn mower at the Official Flymo WebShop. 

Edging Your Lawn

A fantastic looking lawn can be undermined by stray tufts of grass and untidy edges.

To create a clean edge, use some long-handled shears, scissors or grass trimmer to cut along the side of your lawn.

Where the lawn has grown into the borders, you could also use a spade or half-moon edger to redefine the edge. To prevent the grass growing past your lawn’s boundaries you could;

• Create a shallow moat, roughly 1 – 2 inches deep
• Place medium stones around to create a natural border; pathways are a good option for this.
• Readymade plastic or metal garden edges can be purchased and staked into your garden’s edge to create a permanent and defined garden edge.

If you have bald patches on your lawn, you could use the pieces you have removed to create a sharper edge to fill them in. Simply create a shallow hole, lay the new grass in and firm over.

Timing Is Crucial

Always avoid cutting your grass in wet weather. When your lawn is wet, mowed grass tangles with the lawn mower blades which will rip the grass up instead of cutting it. This can be severe if your lawn is long.

Grass grows at a much slower rate in the winter months. Cutting during the winter months can cause lasting damage to your grass, at this time of year your grass will hardly grow or repair itself, possibly causing long-term damage. Wait until the weather becomes warmer, usually around mid to end of March before you cut the grass for the first time.

Initially you may mow infrequently to begin with; however by the end of June to early July, you should mow the grass once a week to maintain a pristine lawn.

Remove Moss & Thatch

Lawns with a large amount of moss can sometimes struggle to thrive. Moss will absorb moisture and water from the ground limiting the amount the grass can grow. Once moss has begun to grow, it can soon take over your lawn.

One of the best defence against moss is to have a healthy thick lawn of grass. To defend against a moss invasion begin the season (around March) by using a scarifier, like the Flymo Lawn Rake to pull up all the moss and thatch in your lawn. Depending on the amount of moss you have, this might make your lawn appear quite bare, but it will regrow within a week or so.

Spray moss killer in the areas worst affected. If there are large bare patches, oversow with lawn seed. This will limit the space between the grass blades and limit the room for moss to grow. Another tip is to aerate the ground to relieve compaction of the soil using a garden fork. This allows oxygen to reach the roots and encourage growth.

Feed Your Lawn

During prolonged hot periods, you will need to water your grass. How often and how frequently depends on your lawn.

If the grass begins to turn yellow or brown give your lawn water, you’ve waited too long – you should water your grass whenever the topsoil is almost dry.
Avoid watering your lawn during the hottest periods of the day as water you use will evaporate. Always water your lawn early in the morning. Gardena watering products are highly recommended.

What to avoid

• Some weed killers, herbicides and processes can damage your grass. Always read the label before use if you’re unsure.
• If you are using a petrol lawn mower never refuel on your lawn. Spillages can scorch your lawn, leaving an odd-looking patch.
• If you are planning to have a barbeque in your garden, try to avoid placing any disposable barbeques on the lawn as they will burn the grass and dry out the soil.

Organic Lawn Care

If you prefer to care for your garden organically, here are a few tips for looking after your lawn.

Dealing with weeds

Most weeds are quite easy to lift out of your lawn using a trowel rather than spraying them with chemicals. You can rake your lawn before mowing each week to lift the weeds up so they are more likely to get caught in the mower blades and weaken over time.

However, should you encourage clover to grow in your lawn as it will collect nitrogen from the air and release it into the soil. This is ideal for your grass to thrive.

Leave Grass Cuttings

While initially untidy, grass cuttings left on your lawn will ensure that nutrients return to the soil when they decompose. Ensure the trimmings are thinly spread, large piles of cutting could stunt the healthy grass beneath it – when finely shredded, grass trimmings will quickly disappear and greatly benefit your lawn.

Pet Friendly Lawn Care

If you have pets, you’ll know that they love playing on the lawn, but it’s important to think about their health when it comes to lawn care. Always ensure you use pet-friendly chemicals and fertilisers. Always read the label with any lawn care products to check their suitability.

You should also make sure that when you do use chemicals, your pets stay inside until the lawn is dry again, and the chemicals have sunk into the roots. However, you don’t always need to use chemicals to have a healthy lawn and organic techniques will work just as well for pet owners.

Train pets to go in the same patch

If your pets like to use your garden as their toilet, encourage them to go in the same patch, rather than all over the lawn. The ammonia in your pet’s urine will turn the grass yellow, but if you restrict this effect to one area, it will be less noticeable.

Cats like to dig over their leavings so encourage them to go in the border of your garden, rather than on the lawn. You can do this by placing some wood chip cat litter in a suitable place, such as under a large bush, and then show your cat the new location.