I can do very little with the lawn at the back of my place....it’s elevated above two patio areas which replaced a mini green ski slope several years ago ( thank gawd). 20 years ago it was a farmers field, it’s up and down, cannot be rotavated flat ( at least by me) because the lumps causing the unevenness are great big pieces of limestone. So grudgingly I have to mow it several times a year. Doesn’t take long because it’s mainly moss.
Directly in front of my house is a flat area of moss/lawn. 30’ x 8’. The moss/ grass was replaced 4 years ago by myself, new turf replacing the old moss. Facing E it’s now reverted to moss and I’m looking for advice re alternatives. Dig it up piecemeal and dump it on my top moss/lawn area ( 45’ x 18’) then replace with gravel, slate chips, limestone chips, planters on top?
Ironically, my neighbour opposite, whose lawn faces S, has an immaculate lawn!
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fake grass...you know it makes sense..
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>> fake grass...you know it makes sense..
Is that like, vaping or what? Different flavours and so on?
;-)
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Or concrete and green floor paint. Brilliant
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Moss is very attractive and holds a lot of water.
Leave it as is.
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So is Kielder but I dont want to look at it for years
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With increasing age and loss of visual acuity migrating to synthetic grass might upset the neighbours, but you will not either see the problems, or suffer the inevitable injuries from manoeuvering a mower.
Alternatively just seed it with wild flowers to create a meadow effect. The multi-colours will look particularly attractive with the cataracts. :)
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>>fake grass...you know it makes sense..<<
Fake grass never makes sense.
On a North facing plot, it looks even more fake than usual.
Embrace what you've got and learn to love it.
Moss is soft underfoot, doesn't need much mowing and is a lovely colour.
Gravel needs weeding, spreads all over and tubs and planters need feeding and watering.
If you really can't beat the urge to compete with Percy Thrower across the road then dig a small border around the edge and fill it with Hebe's. They do well facing North and need no maintenance whatsoever!
Pat
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Guess I’ll mow the tall grass that grows between the moss, trim the edges with shears....I already have a 9†border with some plants. Verdone the weeds, mostly dandelions, that seem to thrive in the moss.
I already have a dozen + large planters scattered around the patio areas....even they seem to accumulate moss on top so that needs scraping off with a trowel.
I’ll restack my large winter log store which has fallen down whilst I’ve been away...
Some 12 years ago I took up a neighbours small front lawn, levelled it, laid some terram, covered with a few tons of purple slate chips, some matching planters, and it still looks pretty good with no weeds evident.
As I’m moving next Spring I’ll just leave as is then.....thanks ( as always ) for the responses.
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"Fake grass never makes sense."
Nonsense, Pat, AFC Sudbury's artificial pitch is the envy of all football clubs for miles around. ;-)
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I dislike fake grass intensely but it does make sense for some. My sister couldn't plug the telly in, let alone fit one or mow a lawn. Now a recent divorcee, she lives alone and opted for fake grass in her tiny back garden. It looks fab - from the kitchen window. I'll be interested to see it after a couple of years.
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>> fake grass in her tiny back garden. It looks fab - from the kitchen window.
A bit like chaps wearing inexpensive and ill-fitting syrups, perhaps we only notice the the poor quality, not too well laid, fake grass.
I occasionally walk past a house with this type of lawn, and it doesn't look at all good.
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I agree - sitting in the garden - it's horrible, but from kitchen window, it looks good.
And it was done professionally, the entire garden - patio and block paving and curved, raised borders etc. But they saw her coming. Shockingly expensive.
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A few lessons to be learnt here...
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5703561/Gang-steal-artificial-LAWNS-cost-50-square-foot-townwide-theft-spree.html
and the best reason for having artificial grass, "so my sons can play football without getting dirty". At £50 a sq ft (£500 sq m!) I should hope she got a free bath and massage thrown in.
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I'll let you know I came home the other day to discover my wife had hoovered (you can't really say Dysoned can you) our artificial lawn and it looked great. Free of all the wee bits of leaf and stuff that had gathered over the winter.
She didn't appreciate my comment about asking her to put stripes in it next time though............
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Yes, I know Haywain. I used to pick up the duff tyres from Ivybridge and take them to Littleport and Mildenhall to be made into Astroturf, then deliver it to schools in Scotland.
That's probably why I hate it:)
But it isn't why.
I hate anything fake to do with gardening especially plastic/silk flowers on women's hats *tut*
...and those vases of fake flowers.
If you can't grow it then have the good grace to admit it and buy an ornament instead.
Pat
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I use Green Thumb to treat my lawns to a weed and feed four times a year and an electric scarifier to get rid of the moss .The last scarify was in January and left the lawn very bare and patchy but cleared two large ' green bins' full of moss.
Since spring treatment , lawns have gone from a weed and moss infested mess to a Wimbledon like finish and when I mowed them yesterday using my Qualcast electric to give them a stripey finish they really looked the business for a relatively small layout ...Under £ 100 a year for treatments and £50 for a Black and Decker scarifier.
A couple of hours effort every week is a small price to pay IMO and I still find plenty of time to relax on the patio loungers with a glass or two of something cool....
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We've been with GT for years. They treated our 1/4 acre "field" cost an arm an a leg twice a year but it looked good in the end. They also come here, costs £25.00 for the postage stamp we have now, but has turned the look and quality of the lawn beyond recognition..
Er...we have moles now...!
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We used to have Green Thumb. It's a franchise so only as good as your local operator. A couple of times they didn't come and claimed they had been. Cancelled them as no discernible effect. We had a local lawn care person out and he said he wouldn't take our money as he couldn't do anything with the lawn. The house was built 10 years ago and there is hardly any soil over the builders' rubble. He said only way to deal with it would be to dig everything out, front and back, including rubble, and re-do. Not worth spending the money.
As far as I am concerned, Green Thumb have been taking money under false pretences. They never tested the depth, or anything else, the first time they came or subsequently.
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At the end of the gardening season last year, Wilko's had all their gardening stuff reduced.
I bought two massive bags of lawn feed and weed killer. Someone had put it on the wrong shelf and it was priced at £2.50 a bag. Original price was something like £15. I got to the till and they wanted to charge me £7 for each bag. I quibbled it and as it was their mistake they honoured the £2.50 price.
I made costly mistake a few years previously when I bought a similar product. It acts as a moisture absorber and over winter stored in the garage it changed from small granules into a solid lump.
Learning from this mistake I cut open the massive bags and shovelled the granules into smaller air tight re-sealable bags. Got a bag out the garage the other day to treat the lawn and the contents were dry as a bone. I've probably got 2 or 3 years worth of lawn feed and weed killer.
Sod paying someone like Green Thumb, when I can do it myself.
Last edited by: VxFan on Wed 30 May 18 at 10:34
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"Someone had put it on the wrong shelf and it was priced at £2.50 a bag. Original price was something like £15."
My wife did that last weekend - picked up a huge watermelon which has to be weighed and barcoded with a sticker like some supermarkets do. She didn't key in watermelon, though, she deliberately keyed in cabbage or something like that. So it was £1.50 not about five quid. Nobody noticed at the till.
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One demonstrates good customer service, the other fraud.
One deserves recognition the other doesn't.
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I usually use self scanning at Tesco. Once in a while I get a random check and they have to rescan between 5 and 10 items. The other week I had to have everything rescanned. That's the first time I've ever had a full rescan in quite a few years.
The only thing that was wrong was they had two bags of easy peel oranges for £2.50, so I'd picked one bag and scanned it twice, but accidentally picked up a different (but near identical) bag of oranges for the second bag.
Made me wonder whether they had watched me on CCTV, and flagged me because of that, or that I'd scanned some stuff in then decided to not have it and scanned it out three of four times. Or maybe it was just random.
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GT being based a few miles from where we live (in St Asaph) - one of the original managers of the GT came out here - his assessment seemed thorough enough and certainly all the moss and weeds have disappeared and the grass is as green as a green thing.
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Replacing a lawn...options - R.P.
