A little bit of lawn TLC

Never having had grass at our house in London, we were so excited with our green, soft lawns. It wasn’t until someone pointed out that it was mostly moss and weeds, and very little grass, that we realised the extent of the job ahead. Particularly as the route to the conservatory and to the bird feeders had been worn almost bare over the winter. As our original plan had been to have our various builds completed by winter and be renting out the farmhouse, we decided this Spring was the only time we had to repair the lawns before we had guests staying. And while that’s no longer likely to happen, we still wanted to get it done and crossed off our to-do list. 

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So, after spending (what felt like) several evenings looking into how to look after lawns (with the intention of only ever doing it once!), we bought the grass feed and hired a scarifier. We mowed the lawn right down to the lowest level, we used the scarifier to pull up all the moss and ‘thatch’ beneath it, resulting in a huge pile of discarded remnants of the lawn, and a patchy lawn that appears to be popular with the birds (we saw our first pied wagtail wandering about on it!) 

At risk of jinxing things too soon, the mole who lives beneath our back lawn and had started to make various appearances at the detriment of the grass, seems to have finally moved on – or found a mate and decided to go back further below ground. 1.5 jars of pickled onions hidden in his tunnels and two attempts at encouraging him to move elsewhere seems to have done the trick – we’ve not seen him emerge for a week now, which is the longest time so far. Hopefully he’s found a more permanent home in one of the surrounding fields… 

And a four-day weekend means we’ll hopefully clear through plenty more jobs! John’s already spent Friday doing his volunteer stint strimming the grass in the village churchyard – one thing we’ve felt since moving in is the sense of community and the need to play our part. Let’s just hope the weather stays nice so we can make some progress in our garden! 

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