When we look to make our garden as beautiful as possible, we can tend to go for the shortcuts, rather than treat the underlying causes. You need to make the lawn the foundation of your garden, and this means you have to look after it properly. A lot of people try to disguise the issues by putting plants or other accouterments around the area. But when you’re looking to make a perfect garden, you’ve got to work on preparing the lawn itself. What does this entail?
Do You Need To Remove Your Old Lawn First?
If there’s old grass or lawn, it’s worth going back to basics and getting rid of this. To remove the old lawn, you can use a special turf-cutting spade, and get into the habit of scalping. This is the best way for you to start all over again. You may be left with several areas of old grass, but what you can do is use this grass to suppress weeds and reduce water loss.
Improving The Soil
It depends on the texture. If it’s very heavy, this can weaken the potential for grass growth. It’s important at this point to add additional nutrients and moisture, this is especially important during the summer months when keeping it cool is very difficult. Because if you are not giving it the moisture it needs, this is going to decrease the moisture retention of the soil. And in addition to this, you have to get rid of the weeds. It’s better to use a lawn weed killer able to degrade in the soil rather than killing the new seeds and hindering their growth.
Settling The Ground
If you can, leave the dug ground for 2 weeks. This will allow it to settle back to its normal level. Because when you take the approach to leveling the surface, it will be much easier, and there won’t be any lumps or bumps making the aeration and seeding process simpler for you.
Making The Ground Level
This can take quite a lot of work, you need to work the soil surface to a rough level, and keep at it until the surface is flat and even. After this, you have to level out the bumps by walking around the soil yourself, shuffling your feet up and down in a sweeping motion. This is known as “treading and healing.” This really is the best way to get rid of smoothing out bumps and air pockets. You’ll be able to feel the surface evening out after a while. And before the summer comes, you can keep going with this, and hopefully, with a bit more rain coming before the summer months, this will help the soil to settle, revealing any undulations that you can flatten out.
To make the lawn the foundation of your garden, you’ve got to go beneath the surface. Seeding the lawn is great, but if you’ve got a garden that hasn’t had much care and attention, you’ve got to work at improving the soil, setting the ground ready for leveling it out, and then applying the necessary foundations and techniques. The lawn is the foundation of your garden, and this means you’ve got to give it more attention than any garden decoration!
