DIY Builds
DIY Builds
Photo: patrice schoefolt
Identify the centre of your dip and slice a cross through it, pushing down with a spade or a lawn edger. Carefully lift the edges and slide the spade under the turf (I say “slide”, but it is really more “lots of shunts”). Do the same all the way around, and then fold back the turf and fill in with garden soil.
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The Bautex wall system which comes from the use of composite materials and foam beads is a great alternative to concrete. It's strong and requires...
Read More »I have been helping my dad out in his garden recently, and he has been complaining of how lumpy his lawn is. I scoffed at first: who cares about a lumpy lawn as long as it’s green? Then I had to mow it. With dad’s old push mower it was a pretty bumpy ride, bits getting missed, the mower jamming into the humps and grinding to a halt in the troughs. It isn’t actually down to his mower either: you may think that something modern and nippy like a hover mower would glide over such choppy seas, but no, the lumps in my own lawn get scalped every time by mine. A lumpy lawn makes for more hard work. There are two solutions to this, one lazy and slow; one back-breaking but instant. I think I may have talked dad into the lazy way, despite knowing in my heart that I really should just buckle down and do it properly. The lazy way is to just fill in the lumps, just like that. Get some soil from elsewhere in the garden, a cane to check the levels, and then fill in the gaps. Leave it a few days then top it up when it sinks. You could then sow with fresh seed, or you could just let the grass grow up and through. Either way, you are going to have muddy patches for a while, but it will sort itself out eventually. The second way is to get up and underneath the troughs: a little trickier. Identify the centre of your dip and slice a cross through it, pushing down with a spade or a lawn edger. Carefully lift the edges and slide the spade under the turf (I say “slide”, but it is really more “lots of shunts”). Do the same all the way around, and then fold back the turf and fill in with garden soil. Create a bit of a lump as you do this, counterintuitive as it may be, to allow for sinkage. Fold back the pieces and fill in any gap with more soil. Water well and your lawn is pretty much ready to use, though it would appreciate a little spell of grace while soil and roots find each other again. Dad also suffers from extreme raggedy edges that have come from a combination of plants hanging over the grass and shading it out so that patches have died off, and grass creeping into the borders. It has a similarly brawn-over-brain solution, and here I have already got the spade out and sliced away offending strays. A piece of string pegged at each end of the straight border and an afternoon moving along it with the half moon edger, and the garden looks as if it has had a brand new haircut, with edges that are easy to mow over. It takes a bit of sweat, but if you can muster the energy to put right your raggedy or lumpy lawn now, you will make life easier for yourself in the long run. Or for your dad.
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