Relay or rotavate a large lawn
Rosie Bee
Posts: 32
Hello all,
My parents are considering relaying their back garden's lawn. It's fairly large - about 45'x50'. It's quite 'lumpy' but the bigger issue is that it's full of moss and weeds. The lawn is surrounded on 3 sides by large trees - plus of course, the house.
My dad has spoken to a few companies and they're all keen to rotavate it. That sounds like a bad idea to me - as I said to him, all the weeds will simply regrow, they could even get a lot worse. He's not a gardener at all. My mum (the gardener) has scarified the lawn and spent hours and hours over many years raking out moss, to no effect. She's also used 4 in 1 (?) weed and feed stuff but that's not helped much either.
I'd suggest they have the current lawn scraped off and the new turf put down. Would probably cost a bomb but they're on a healthy pension!!
What would you say?
thanks in advance.
Posts
If they're only concerned about the weeds & moss I'd consider using one of the lawn maintenance companies.
I used one until 6 years ago when I moved from my previous garden. The lawn area there was quite a bit larger than your parents & they charged £30 a time to visit 4 times a year and apply appropriate lawn feed / weedkiller / mosskiller. I could have had them once a year / twice a year - whatever I chose - but the lawn was in a right state so I went for 4 times.
The charge was less than I would have paid if I'd bought the feed / herbicides myself from a GC and they came and actually did the job - where I would have sat and looked at the box of chemicals for weeks and maybe only done it once a year.
I also paid them a one off fee to scarify and aerate the grass the first autumn I used them.
The result was a proper, green, virtually weed-free lawn instead of the compacted weed-ridden grass which was there before. In some areas it was just compacted mud and weeds - no grass.
They really turned the lawn around & I shall be using them again now my new garden is nearly sorted.
Highly flexible / easily cancelled contract - no real catches with the company I used and they always gave me about 3 days notice when they were coming in case it wasn't convenient or I wanted to cancel.
The company I used was local to me (Suffolk) and was called Lawn Hopper or something like. Lots of other companies with names like Green Thumb, Green Man etc. Google is your friend
It sounds like quite a shady area, and grass struggles to grow well in such conditions. If that's the case even if you re-lay new turf or re-seed you'll still have problems.
There are also the trees which are sucking most of the moisture out of the soil which is making things worse. Grass likes rain and sunshine and a bit of tlc now and then.
My neighbour has high hedges and a huge bramley bang in the middle of the lawn and he recently had a company come to re-rejuvenate it. They used a proper lawn aerator over all the lawn, then top dressed and re-seeded. They'll be back in the autumn to do the final stage (whatever that is..) I think the cost all-in was about £300 for a lawn about 120ft x 30. They're not like Green Thumb etc as they don't offer a year-round service, they just renovate existing lawns.
It already looks a lot better.
So as Tb suggests above, may be worth getting some quotes
Billericay - Essex
Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit.
Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
Many thanks - I didn't know such companies existed! We will check them out.