6 steps to a gorgeous garden

Like caring for your teeth, maintaining your oven or bike maintenance, looking after your front lawn is one of those jobs that doesn’t immediately scream ‘sexy!’

But a few simple, quick tasks, undertaken regularly, can ensure your little corner of the earth is looking lush and lovely all year round. It’s worth taking the time to do the following:

1. The primary, and most important, commandment of lawn care is to clip it regularly. Mowing it once a week will keep your grass at its most healthy and lustrous.

2. That means mowing it to the right height - no less than 1 inch (2 in *ahem* dry spells, though that’s not likely a Belfast concern…), and never remove more than one third of the total length in one cut. The bottom part of a blade of grass is akin to a tree trunk, so chopping it too close will damage the health of the grass. It also turns your lawn into a breeding ground for moss and weeds.

3. Just as you wouldn’t want a haircut with blunt scissors, so you shouldn’t take to your garden with a blunt mower. Ensure you service your mower twice a year to make sure it is in fine fettle and has sharp blades.

4. Although it’s already conceded that a dry spell isn’t usually a Northern Ireland problem, if a drought does hit, make sure to keep your lawn watered, ideally once daily. Keep the grass at 2 inches in height and if water isn’t soaking through, your lawn may be hydrophobic and suffering from Dry Patch. If that’s the case, a professional lawn treatment service can treat your lawn for you with a water conserver.

5. Individual lawns have individual requirements, which makes it wise to utilise a lawn treatment service to keep your fields at their most verdant.

“We will come and look at your lawn at no cost,” Hugh Gaston of Green Thumb South Antrim advises, “and recommend treatments as appropriate. Our basic program entails four visits a year. We’ll treat the lawn with a slow-release grain feed to keep it growing, then spray for weeds. In winter we can treat for moss control to ensure your lawn doesn’t get ruined by moss.”

All this primes your patch for premium health.

6. But if it’s still languishing and patchy after all that, there are more intensive treatments that provide the TLC to tend your lawn is up to full health. This includes hollow tine aeration, in which the soil is decompacted to enable water can get to the roots of the grass. Conversely, if your lawn is overly spongy, scarification can rectify that. Again, lawn service experts will ensure the perfect solution nurses your thatch back to health.

Green Thumb South Antrim has 14 years of experience caring for and servicing lawns. For a free, no-obligation consultation on how to bring your lawn to life, call 02890 357853 or visit www.greenthumb.co.uk