Gardening Tips for Beginnners

Some people naturally have green fingers and seem to know what to do in the garden instinctively. However, for others gardening is a skill that needs to be learned, but thankfully it is not as difficult as you might imagine. Here are a few gardening tips for beginners to get you going.

Lawn Care

Lawns often make up the most significant part of the garden, and patchy damaged grass is a possibility no matter where you live. If you are not happy with the quality of the growth, you can reseed some, or all of your lawn to achieve a better look. People often assume that the grass they inherit when they move into a property is as good as it gets but understanding the soil you have will enable you to pick the best seed to repair the lawn and leave it looking lush and healthy in a few short months.

Living in the Shade

Some gardens are naturally shady; this can be due to building height, trees and of course the direction of the sun. This can mean the lawn doesn’t get as much sunlight as it needs, so our Shaded Areas (e8) seed offers a perfect solution as it has been developed to grow well with minimal sunlight.

Waterlogged Lawns

Unfortunately, the great British weather is such that we are often subject to more rain than any of us would like. In the garden this can lead to waterlogged roses, somewhat drowned bedding plants, and a rather boggy lawn which tends to damage the grass. These adverse conditions are perfect for our Clay / waterlogged soils (e10) seed, which copes well in wet weather and recovers from flooding well.

Dry Lawns

At the other extreme, we have those gardens where soil tends to be drier than one would hope. This usually means the ground is fine and sandy and this prevents good growth. The Water saver - dry soils (e11) blend has been designed to tackle this problem as it copes well with less water.

Lawn Care - next steps

Once you have established the best grass seed for your garden, lawn care is quite straightforward. Grass needs to be cut once or twice a month, preferably when dry, and generally between April to October. Through the winter months growth will naturally slow, and because it is colder and wetter, and for some of the time frosty, mowing would do more damage than good.

If during this time you feel that water is becoming a problem you can aerate the soil, in the most basic way by using a garden fork and making regular holes in the ground. For a larger lawn or to create neater holes, an aerator, a machine with spikes on a roller, can be purchased at most garden stores.

In the summer if you find your grass suffering from a lack of rain, you can water the lawn along with your plants, assuming there are no hosepipe bans. Only water when the sun has set, as watering in direct sunlight will cause the ground to scorch.