Lawn Ideas, Tips & Guides

The traditional lawn is undergoing a rethink now that droughts are becoming more common as the effects of climate change intensify. On drought-prone, free-draining soil, lawn grass turns brown when under stress. In these conditions a creeping thyme lawn is a beautiful, low-maintenance and nature-friendly alternative to a grass lawn, as long as it suits your garden use. Creeping thyme makes a good lawn replacement in the UK, either alone or combined with other prostrate ground cover plants, although thyme rarely thrives as part of a grass lawn because the grass out-competes plants unless the soil is very low in fertility.

A good pair of garden shears can make garden tasks quick and easy to tackle. They’re essential for the proper care of hedges, shrubs, and lawns, helping to keep them in tip-top condition. Unlike secateurs, which are designed for pruning single branches, garden shears can tackle several branches or blades of grass at once. There are a couple of different types –

Fall is a great time for garden chores. This is the time to clean up before winter, protect vulnerable plants, and wind down the growing season. This isn’t the right time for all tasks, though. Know what to do with your garden in the fall and what not to do — for instance, what plants should not be cut back in the fall — to best prepare it for next year.

EDWIN FOTHERINGHAM

As part of your Premium access, you can send your gardening questions to our horticultural experts each month. They will then answer a selection of the questions they receive, and share the advice at the end of the month.

While our lawns thrive and grow green and lush during the spring months, planting grass seed should actually happen in the fall. Fall grass seeding is ideal for cool season turf grasses like bluegrass, fescue and ryegrass. While there is an optimal time for reseeding the lawn in fall, if you’ve missed the window, don’t despair; there is yet another method for laying grass season for fall. Keep reading to learn how to seed your lawn like a pro.

There are several slightly unpleasant chores related to yard maintenance, like mowing and weeding. But at the season’s end, raking the leaves can be tedious, back breaking and a seemingly thankless gesture. The job can be made a bit easier with some tips on how to rake autumn leaves with less strain, proper tools, and a better plan.

The idea of keeping at least some of a garden natural and relatively uncultivated is growing in popularity. Even in traditionally well-manicured suburban enclaves, the concept is taking root.

With winter rapidly approaching, it’s time to give lawns some final TLC, helping them to recover from the challenging summer months of warm weather and heavy footfall, and to prepare for the colder months to come.

When the sun is shining, the garden is the place to be. Gardening with kids is a great way to get them outside and learning about the natural world. However, if your kids would rather spend time with a screen than a garden spade, it can be a struggle to get them outdoors. Luckily, there are plenty of kids’ garden toys to make being outdoors more fun – from toys they can play with by themselves to games for the whole family to enjoy.

In the autumn months it’s glorious to see the leaves turn from green through to golden brown but once they start to fall and cover our gardens, it’s a different matter. While those that settle on bare ground in the veg patch and in beds can be left to rot down to act as a mulch, piles of leaves on lawns, borders, paths and patios are best cleared away to prevent them becoming a hotbed for pests and diseases or creating a dangerously slippery surface once the wet weather arrives.

A well kept, manicured lawn is a point of pride for gardeners and maintaining it should be one of the easiest tasks in the garden. There’s a huge choice of different mowers on the market but electric corded mowers are the most common and one of the easiest to use. They’re quiet, light and easy to manoeuvre plus they’re clean with no fuel fumes or regular servicing needed. They’re also the cheapest, but do you get what you pay for? To find out if paying less means you lose out on features or performance our gardening experts tested a range of corded electric lawn mowers that won’t break the bank.

A lawn mower may be one of the first purchases we make when getting a garden of our own, but that doesn’t mean finding a good quality one is easy. There are so many models and brands on the market to choose from, including corded electric and petrol, but as their range increases and prices fall, cordless, battery-powered models are an increasingly popular option.

Choosing the best lawn mower can be a tricky task, with so many models on the market and such a wide range of brands. There are five main types of mower available at hugely varying prices and all with different features that need to be considered.

If you want your garden to be filled with flowers next spring, planting bulbs in autumn is the key. But to ensure you get a dazzling display, you need to plant your bulbs well – at the correct depth and in the right type of compost. Find out how to guarantee great results with David Hurrion’s masterclass – simply register for free or sign in, to view our masterclass videos.

To celebrate the launch of the new Cobra Fortis cylinder mowers, we’re giving you the chance to win the Cobra Fortis 14L cylinder mower worth £1,099.00.

My husband and I bought our first home in a small West Virginia town in January 2023. The bright green dwelling sits in the middle of a dead-end street where retirees claim most homes as the original dwellers. From 1978 until now, our house had only one homeowner. So, for the past 45 years, the yard has been a neatly mowed lawn with a single tulip tree. 

Fall is the peak time to properly evaluate your home, so you know what to fix before winter approaches. From gardening to HVAC and plumbing, it's important to make sure your home is in good condition especially if you're hoping for a stress-free year ahead.

Is there a gardener anywhere who wouldn’t appreciate a beautiful space designed specifically to keep maintenance requirements realistic and manageable? I recently designed such a landscape for a client who wanted to replace her front lawn with a garden where her family of six could play, socialize, and gather with their large circle of relatives and friends. The goal was to strike a balance between beauty and ease of care, since she wanted to maintain the space without hiring outside help. The design we came up with is an excellent example of a hardworking landscape that looks great but does not require hours of labor or a crew of landscapers to keep it that way. As a bonus, the new garden requires about half the water that the turfgrass did.

If you have a dog, you might be interested in growing a lawn that’s not only pleasing to the human eye but also to your pet. Below are some of the Best Grass for Dogs that are generally pet-friendly and tips on how to grow each one.

Anyone who has bought or sold a home is familiar with the term “curb appeal.” Your agents may have bandied about the phrase and probably suggested you trim the foundation shrubs (or add some), plant colorful flowers, and rake the leaves all in the name of curb appeal. And they were right. Attractive landscaping has the wow factor that draws people inside. We all want our landscaping to add value to our home as well as beautify the grounds.

What is top dressing a lawn?

It can be quite cumbersome to maintain a garden, especially when it comes to cutting grass on a regular basis to keep it looking spic and span. If you want to save yourself from this mundane chore, try these Landscaping Without Grass Ideas!

As part of your Premium access, you can send your gardening questions to our horticultural experts each month. They will then answer a selection of the questions they receive, and share the advice at the end of the month.

The centerpiece of a traditional American landscape has long been a verdant, weed-free expanse of lawn. But all too often conventional lawn care is achieved by applying an onslaught of synthetic fungicides and fertilizers that are detrimental to soil health. In my mind, an organically maintained lawn uses a mix of turfgrass species and clover and has the added benefit of supporting pollinators and a host of soil-dwelling organisms.

Biodiversity and sustainability have become buzzwords in horticulture of late. Encouraging wildlife, using items in a sustainable manner and reducing our waste is crucial for a healthy garden and planet – but for many of us, working out how to do this can feel overwhelming. Here’s my simple steps to starting your journey to a more sustainable and wildlife-friendly growing space…

Nature's autumn bounty of fallen leaves isn't usually a problem for lawns and gardens, and mulching the ground with them actually helps to feed the soil for a healthier yard.

Today we’re in Nella’s Michigan garden.

Step into the enchanting realm of Red Mushrooms, where folklore meets science and culinary delight meets potential danger. These vibrant fungi are far more than eye-catching additions to the woodland floor or your local grocer’s shelf. From their roles in ancient rituals to their modern-day medicinal applications and culinary uses, they have captivated human imagination for centuries. Intrigued? Keep scrolling to unearth the fascinating world of red mushrooms!

When it comes to gardening, hillsides are hard. Steep slopes are difficult to plow, to mow and to irrigate. But unplanted or inappropriately planted, a hill is prone to erosion.

Spending time gardening or enjoying others’ gardens opens our eyes to the environment around us and the realities of climate change. But can individuals make a difference by gardening more sustainably, when the problems (and solutions) seem so huge?

'A Rewilding Britain Landscape’ by Urquhart & Hunt at Chelsea in 2022

Having a lush and green lawn can be a great source of pride for homeowners. However, maintaining a healthy patch of grass can be challenging, especially during hot weather conditions. We all know that one of the crucial aspects of lawn care is watering and knowing the best time to water your lawn during hot weather can create a significant difference in maintaining a great lawn.

Fungi belong to a group of organisms in its own right, that is neither plant nor animal. They play an important role in the lifecycles of other organisms, with some species helping to transfer nutrients from the soil to tree roots, and others recycling dead and decaying matter, such as wood. Some types of fungi parasitise plants and animals. They can live in harmony with their host for many years, like the beautiful wood shank fungus that is often found growing in holes of living trees, but they can also kill plants, such as the more deadly forms of honey fungus. For most of the year fungi are present as string-like mycelium, which usually lives underground. Usually all we see only the fruiting bodies, known as mushrooms, which cast spores into the air colonise new spaces. Mushrooms come in a variety of beautiful shapes and sizes.

Don’t let the concept of Chaotic Garden confuse you! It can be a great project to take on. Let’s understand it in detail.

Resilience. It’s one of the buzz words everyone’s talking about right now, part of the zeitgeist. And it’s true. We do need resilience in all walks of life – emotional, physical, spiritual, psychological. And the planet needs resilience, too, although a glance to any news bulletin will confirm that we’re not doing too well on that score.