Give Your Garden a New Look

Are you considering a new look for your garden in 2022? If so, look at our tips for placing your lawn at the heart of your redesign. With careful planning you could use this as an opportunity to eliminate some common lawn problems, as well as avoiding new problems in the future.

Plan, plan, plan

Before you so much as lift a spade, you must plan any redesign properly. Start by thinking about what you use your garden for. Is it largely ornamental? Does it double as a football pitch? Or is your summer an endless stream of outdoor parties an entertaining? Once you are clear what you want to use your garden for you can start to consider what to add, what to change and what to leave alone. 

When it comes to your lawn, your main considerations are likely to be whether you keep the lawn its current size – and generally that means thinking about whether to make it smaller – and whether to alter the shape of your lawn, which we’ll come to next.

When you’ve decided what you want, draw it out on paper to get a sense of what works.

Thinking about shape

Most people’s lawns are square or rectangular, and there are some advantages to these regular shapes. It is generally simpler to keep the edges tidy, largely because edging tools tend to be straight. Creating curved edges can be done quite easily, but you may want to consider whether you will be able to maintain the shape as easily. 

Using the shape to avoid problems

You could use a lawn redesign as a chance to eliminate or reduce some existing problems with your lawn. For example, if your lawn that has areas of heavy shade these may be susceptible to moss or algae. In general, the advice is to try and cut back or remove trees and bushes to reduce the area that is shaded. However, this may not always be possible. Trees can be too large or may belong to a neighbour. In these cases it may be more practical to remove the portion of lawn that is heavily shaded and replace it with shade loving plants such as foxgloves or irises.

The trouble with mowing

Whatever shape your lawn is, at some point you’ll need to mow it and you should think about this when considering your garden design. While edging your lawn with brick, pavers etc can look really effective, you can damage mower blades if you are not careful. The trick is to ensure that edges are sunk into the ground so that mower wheels can move over them without making contact with the blades. 

You should also check that any adjustments to your garden don’t make it difficult to manoeuvre the mower around. Again, creating flower beds within your lawn, rather than just around it, can look very attractive but can be tricky to mow around.

A path away from mud

If you have a regular route that you use across your lawn, maybe to a shed, a back gate or a patio, you probably have to avoid it when the weather is wet so that you don’t turn it into a muddy mess. Adding a path to your garden design can solve this problem. 

Of course, adding a path can also open up additional possibilities for how you use your garden. Maybe an area gets the evening sun, but you don’t use it as you have to walk across the grass to get to it. Laying a path or paths to different areas of the garden allows access to more areas without damaging your lawn and can help you get more use out of it.

Keep it healthy

However you choose to redesign your lawn and garden keeping it healthy is key to keeping it looking good. All Green Lawn Treatments offers a number of year-round lawn treatments that will ensure that your grass always looks its best. Contact us today for a free lawn analysis.