Head Gardener’s Lawn Maintenance Tips

August 09 2019 | Garden

Lawn Maintenance Tips

• If the grass is too wet to mow, then use lawn edgers to regularly trim the borders of your yard. Crisp, sharp edges will give a more aesthetically pleasing appearance to the entire lawn.
• Bald patches can be improved by laying turf down and/or planting grass seed – with the warm, wet conditions of late it is still a good time to do this.
• Spot-treat weeds in the grass with a specialised weed killer which targets the weed but not the grass; or simply dig them out. (Using a normal weed killer is likely to kill the grass as well as the weeds).
• In good conditions, mowing once a week should be sufficient.
• If the weather improves and it gets hotter over the next month or so then the grass is likely to turn yellow. However, there is no need to water it as the lawn will recover when the rain returns; the grass at Hever Castle isn’t watered.

Lawn Maintenance at Hever Castle

The extensive lawns in the formal Italian Garden used to be mown using a big ride-on mower, but this year the gardening team switched to using a smaller pedestrian mower. The new method doesn’t take much longer than the old way, but is less damaging to the grass and creates sharper, more defined stripes that complement the formality of the area.

When asked his tips on getting straight lines in the grass, Neil said, “Normally when you mow you tend to look at the mower; to get good stripes you need to fix your eyes on where you’re going and stay looking at that spot – otherwise you’ll get wonky lines!”

The rest of the grounds at Hever Castle are mown using a mixture of pedestrian and ride-on mowers depending on the size and formality of the area. At this time of the year – which is the peak lawn mowing time in the grounds – up to four gardeners will mow across the week spending on average 48 hours or the equivalent of two full days mowing per a week.

Read more about the Hever Castle gardens.