‘I should mow the lawn,” I said to my wife in February, looking out of the back kitchen at the tufty, teenage-beard grass. And I did. It was ready, it was growing, if slowly.
What a difference that cut made to the feel of the place. It had nothing to do with machine love (mowing bores me) or guilt about things left undone. The difference was that making that scrappy wintry turf one even green plane again made the place feel bigger, fresher, brighter and more open. It invited you in, to look at the planting around it — snowdrops, hellebores, primroses.
Now, as the days lengthen and the nights become warmer, the grass is beginning to grow faster, so start to mow in earnest to get that welcoming green space in good shape.
The trick with spring mowing, especially if you’ve not cut this year, is to take it only gradually down to your preferred summer height. First cut, like mine, is just evening up the tufts — so set the mower to a higher setting. Second cut, a couple of weeks later, change to the next setting down, so you are taking a bit off all over. And so on until by May you are down to the ideal summer level. Why gradually? Well, suddenly cutting deep until it shows yellow — totally defoliating the turf when it’s still growing relatively slowly — is debilitating and counter-productive. It’s far better to keep it green, for the grass and for you and your mower.
What to consider when mowing the lawn
You don’t have to mow the whole lawn
Maybe you have decided you will let some lawn grow longer through spring and early summer, to let its turf weeds flower for the sake of wildlife. So choose your patch or patches-to-be, but still mow them a couple of times before you leave them alone. The result will be far more even-textured by May/June and less of a stark contrast.
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You need lawn feed only if it’s yellow and weak
Most lawns don’t need feeding and they make quite enough mowing as it is. Why make more? If it’s usually OK, leave well alone. It’s lawns that grow weakly and thinly, or are yellow, that need a spring feed, and even then it’s worth remembering that grass always becomes greener as the season warms up.
So think hard before rushing to lawn feeds and certainly to all-over applications. It may be there are hungry patches that need a boost where tree roots come under, or a patch that was damaged by drought last summer and never properly picked up again. Feed these, wait a couple of weeks, and see if the lawn is now all one even green. Evenness is more important than the perfect DayGlo green.
Don’t mow too low on a moss garden
Confession: I have a woodland moss garden. Yes, it colonises lawns that are shady and ill-drained (and therefore ought not to have been made there). But in most open lawns, even if moss is conspicuous in spring, it is out-competed by the grass as it grows away, and the moss ceases to be a real problem by summer. Does it actually matter? Is it worth hurling on chemicals, either in the form of moss-killer or the subtler “weed-and-feed” mixtures?
Well, it matters if you mow badly: because if those very first cuts to a mossy lawn go too deep they will decapitate the moss, which will then look spectacularly yellow and have you thinking the grass is desperately sick too. Mow gently. Tolerate some moss, especially in spring.
Turf is easy to move and repair
At this time of year turf is at its most forgiving. You can lift it like carpet tiles and swap it about from here to there and it doesn’t mind a bit. It quickly re-roots and the repair is invisible in three weeks, even without watering. So now is a perfect opportunity to fix all those niggles.
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Where lawn edges have broken down, slide a spade under the turf, peel it back, pack in soil to raise the level and slap down the turf again, whacking it level with the back of a spade. Be sure to trickle soil into any gaps so the edges of the turf doesn’t dry out.
Balding patches can have bits of better turf from elsewhere in the garden cut in to replace them (bought-in turf so often stays looking very different from your native surrounding sward) or they can be lightly forked, broken into a fine tilth and seeded, though seeding will require you to keep off for a couple of months whereas a turf patch will let you back on in three weeks.
For very lightly balding patches, or patches that are smeary and sit wet, it may be enough just to have a serious stabbing with a fork, and a gentle prising upwards, to increase drainage and air to the roots.
Question time
Q I planted the double yellow banksian rose because I thought it smelt of violets. But last year it flowered for the first time and had no scent. Is my plant a dud?
S McCormack
A Afraid not. The double yellow Rosa banksiae ‘Lutea’ has little scent, but it does do better in the UK than the single yellow (‘Lutescens’), or single or double white. All are early-flowering 6m rambling roses, which should crust themselves with masses of tiny flowers, but they rely on hot summers and mild winters to perform well.
Q My husband bought me some spring snowflake bulbs five years ago for my birthday but they never seem to thrive. Any ideas?
C Manning
A They may look like plumped-up snowdrops but they are not quite so accommodating of poor conditions. Where snowdrops tolerate dry summer shade, snowflakes (leucojums, in this case Leucojum vernum) like a humus-rich, moist soil and even like clay. The tall summer snowflake Leucojum aestivum (50cm) will grow happily beside a pond. Try moving them somewhere moister and see if they improve; like snowdrops, you can move them in leaf.
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Q I lost my mother to Covid and would like to plant a white magnolia in her memory. Can you recommend any?
L Starr
A You might like ‘Wada’s Memory’, named after the Japanese gentleman who raised it. It’s a small tree with large, fragrant flowers in March/April, very freely produced, and has received an Award of Garden Merit. It’s a hybrid of the willow-leaved Magnolia salicifolia and neither of which has that stiff, fat-twigged habit of some magnolias, and I like that: in summer when it’s not in flower it looks more at home among the general run of British trees.
Send your questions to stephen.anderton@thetimes.co.uk
Weeder’s digest
Take a look around your hellebores. Chances are there will be the odd little evergreen seedling from last year, longing to be liberated from under the heavy canopy of its mother’s foliage. Either pot it up for a few months or move it straight to a new home, keeping as much soil as possible attached to the roots. Water in well.
If you have favourite hellebores already — doubles, yellows, slate-blacks — and want to propagate them, try taking a knife and slicing away a couple of buds from the outside of the clump, then forking that section away with its roots intact, ready for replanting elsewhere in a hole well enriched with good compost. If the leaves have started to develop, water well.
To ensure good growth, flowering and foliage colour, apply a light dressing of balanced fertiliser to permanent plantings in containers: box, maples, bay, bamboos, camellias, conifers etc. It saves so much messing about with liquid feed later in the season.
In the difficult shady spots where they do so well, the evergreen roast beef iris, Iris foetidissima, has now dropped its orange berries: time to cut out the flower stems and all the scruffy old foliage to smarten up the plants for summer.
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As well as good light, generous feeding and moisture is required to produce the fattest, best-coloured bamboo canes, so now is the time to pile on a generous mulch of compost. If the clump was well thinned last year, you can spread it right through the centre of the clump as well as around the outside. Feeding this way will not produce fatter canes this year but it will build up fatter underground rhizomes with fatter buds that will produce the goods next season.
