Can I rescue this long-neglected lawn?
Last November we moved in to a house with about ⅓ acre / 1,500 sqm / 15,000 sqft of lawn in the suburbs of London. House was bought from the estate of a man in his nineties, and it was apparent when we moved in that it hadn't been mown the previous summer. Don't have a clear "before" pic so here's some incidental ones of the back, and a closer up shot (deer not relevant)
I have no desire to keep all of that space as lawn, and plan to seed some of it as wildflower meadow, some as vegetable beds, and build a garage - but some is being kept as conventional lawn. Didn't want to try and fix it over the winter but with the nice weather over the last week we got a strimmer, lawnmower, borrowed a scarifier and got started. My intention was to strim, mow high, mow low, scarify/dethatch, aerate, and seed, over the next few weeks.
However, having got as far as mowing on maximum height (pic as of this morning), I'm starting to realise quite how deep the moss and thatch goes. I have a feeling that whilst it was mown a year or so ago, it hasn't been properly cared for / raked / dethatched etc. for many years. There's over an inch of thatch and moss in some areas, and I'm skeptical there'll be anything left alive if I go deep enough to take that out. We tested the scarifier on a section that's getting built over anyway and this was the result. I'm starting to wonder if the better approach in the long term would be to completely remove the current lawn and reseed it from bare earth.
Thoughts?
Posted Mar 24, 2022, 9:50 AM UTC
I would run a rake over it first to pull up any moss/thatch. You'll be left with bare bits of course, but nothing that a bit of aerating, scarifying and seeding won't fix.
It's going to be hard work and you won't see instant beautiful lawn results this year but the longer something is left the longer it takes to fix. Unless you dig it all up and lay new turf.