The Lawn
The lawn is often the centrepiece of the garden. For many gardeners this makes it worth all the mowing, feeding and tending to get it to look its best. If the lawn is also to serve as a play area for children it would be sensible to choose tough grasses for a hard wearing lawn. Show lawns and children don’t mix. Instead of that fantastic finish you could build the whow factor into the shape of the lawn or striking edging.
Circular lawns can look stunning. Several circular lawns linked by areas of paving break up a long narrow garden. In a small garden you could have one circle as the centre point. Circular lawns must be edged properly. Nothing looks worse than circle that isn’t circular and constant trimming back will reduce the size of your lawn, in time. It is a good idea to incorporate firm edging, such as upturned bricks or edging strips.
Rectangular gardens need to be broken up if they are not to look boring. One way of doing this is by extending the patio or a flower bed into the lawn – this breaks up the shape. You could also include a feature such as a birdbath or a small fountain.
A sweeping lawn with bays and curves where flower borders ebb and flow looks wonderful, but this is very difficult to achieve in a small garden. However, you could bring out a border in a large curve and wrap the lawn round behind it.
The Lawn in a small garden could be raised or sunken and this would create the impression of more space. If making a sunken lawn ensure that you include a mowing edge so that you can get the lawnmower right up to the edge of the grass.
Maintaining a perfect lawn is a labour intensive task and most of us don’t have the time for that kind of maintenance. There are no short-cuts, the lawn needs to be mown regularly if it is to enhance the look of the garden. The lawn needs to be weeded and fed and it also needs to be edged if it is to show off your borders and flower beds to their best advantage. Don’t cut your lawn too short in the summer – this will result in the lawn going brown during a long hot and dry spell.
Most lawns are a mixture of annual and perennial grasses, weeds and a bit of moss. This mix gives you the nice, green lawn. Some lawn weeds can look very pretty in flower and give you the added bonus of attracting the bees. If you really cannot bear to have buttercups, daisy and clover in your lawn you can lift them out by hand or treat the lawn with a 3-in-1 weed, feed and moss killer. Dandelions are more problematic because they self seed and have deep roots. Make sure that you dig up all the root when removing them from the lawn.
Most lawns have some moss in them – if you really don’t like it you can treat it with an off the shelf moss killer and then rake it out once it has gone brown. However, you then need to re-seed all the bare patches.
Finally, remember to keep your lawn edged, this is best done with and edging tool. If you don’t fancy edging the lawn once a week, to keep it looking neat you could invest in EverEdge. This is spiked metal sheeting that can be banged into the ground. It will maintain the outline of the lawn without the need for edging irons or shears. This is probably a good idea in a small garden, but could prove a bit expensive if you have a large garden.
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