Garden Advice needed

joe123

We moved into our house just over a year ago. Back lawn at the time was newly done by the builder, top soil put down and seeded. After some weeding throughout the year and some additional grass seed put down, its still in very rough shape. I've attached a picture where you'll see some decent spots and some bad. Even in the decent spots, while the grass is long, its not very full.

A few other issues:

- Drainage is very poor in some areas, Water will pool with heavy rain and some of the grass can become quite "marshy".

- Some of the grass just refuses to grow but in other areas its already in bad need of a cutting. I stuck a pitch fork in some areas and hit stone quite often so I'm guessing it might need some work in that area to remove some additional stones.



I'm not looking for/expect a perfect bowling green, but at the same time would like a decent looking lawn.

I'm thinking:

1. Spike the lawn with a pitchfork/remove any stones I come across
2. Brush in sand around areas that has poor drainage
3. Get more grass seed.

Any suggestions or other tips would be greatly appreciated!

macraignil

The areas with better grass growth might just be down to the extra nutrient from pet urine and their other additives to particular parts of the lawn. The grass may not be very thick because it has not been mowed regularly for a time and I would just try this for a while on a medium height setting before applying the steps you mention. Grass can grow in soil with stones in it so trying to dig stones out might make more work than is necessary and leave the area more uneven and looking worse. See how it looks after a few months of regular mowing before deciding if further work is required. Some might suggest a weed and feed product but since these contain a herbicide that will kill off some nice pollinator friendly plants like clover and common daisy which I like to see in my lawn area I would avoid these. If there is still poor growth in a few months then a general lawn fertiliser might help boost your grass.

looksee

I doubt stones are the whole of the problem. Builders are not gardeners and their idea of a lawn is to more or less level the rubbish - lumps of concrete, broken pipes, plastic wrappers from materials, etc, cover with a sprinkle of topsoil and seed, and run.

Try Macragnil's suggestions, certainly mow it, and see how it goes for a season. In the end though, especially given the marshy-ness the best solution might be to start again, dig all the rubbish out, loosen the impacted soil underneath which is causing the flooding, put some more topsoil in and sow another lawn. I absolutely agree about not over stressing about killing weeds, even a patch of lawn can contribute to the ecology of the area by having a few daisies, some clover, self heal, and whatever else (apart from thistles and docks!) pops up. We are very rapidly heading towards a time when the absolute monoculture lawn will be regarded as boring (I do already, but that's probably because most of my grass is buttercups).