Follow our step by step guide to achieve a lush green lawn.
Creating a healthy lawn from scratch can be rewarding with proper preparation and guidance. This step by step guide covers all bases from soil preparation to seed sowing and growth management. With care and patience, you'll achieve a vibrant lawn that enhances your outdoor space year-round.
Preparing the Site
Firstly start by removing all stones, weeds and any other debris from which area you would like to sow.
Lawn drainage is important when preparing a new lawn, dig the area over as deep as you can (this helps to break up any compacted soil and adds oxygen) a badly drained lawn may affect the grass growth.
Grade your lawn by levelling any uneven patches, add top soil where needed.
If the soil appears to be heavy, use peat to break it down, this retains more moisture and nutrients to help your lawn germinate.
Rake over the area ensuring a fine finish.
Roll the area slightly to prevent any uneven drops in the soil.
Finally, rake before sowing.
Sowing
Seed can be sown from mid-March to early October.
To work out how much seed is needed, measure the area in metres, multiply area by sowing rate (35-50grams per m² for new lawns), divide results by 1000 to get weight of seed required (kg/kgs).
Divide your lawn into manageable sections, then divide the seed accordingly use half the amount of seed for each section going left to right then front to back, this will ensure the seed bed has an even coverage. A spreader can be used for larger areas.
When the seed has been sown, rake in slightly and water.
To ensure seed has good contact with the soil, roll the area.
First watering is very important, make sure you apply the water lightly to the soil, so you don’t wash the seed away or create puddles.
Aftercare
Make sure the soil is always kept moist, don’t exceed too much water, this could cause the seed to rot.
Always check the colour of the soil at regular intervals, if the soil looks light in colour it’s time for more water.
If when your grass seed has started germinating, patches might occur, don’t worry continue the process, it will come through (some areas come quicker).
Keep foot traffic to a minimum, especially dogs throughout the germination period.
Once your new lawn starts to develop, you can start to cut back on the water (depending on weather).
When your new lawn reaches 3-4 inches, you should start mowing (depending on the grass seed used) never cut more than a third in height.
Mow when the soil is on the dry side.
Fertilisers are good for late sown lawns, as it will help with cold weather pressures.
Most fertilisers contain Nitrogen, to increase plant production; Nitrogen also helps with weed germination.
Keeping weeds at bay, no matter how good the seed or the seed bed, weeds will always appear, if weeds are present they can be controlled by mowing, pulling the weeds out by hand or spraying (however please be careful when spraying) follow recommended usage.
To view our full range of high quality Lawn Seed, including our new Lawn Transformation Pack, equipped with 5kg of grass seed and three fertilisers, click here.
