Dig in autumn and early winter when relatively dry. Once wetted by winter rains, clay soils often cannot be worked or walked on until mid-spring Once you’ve aerated, it’s time for the top dressings. Apply organic Calcified Seaweed or non-organic lime The worst grass seed suppliers will only ever meet those standards. I would never use or recommend them.

Best for shaded gardens: Gardeners Dream Shady seed Got tall trees casting shadows? Gardeners Dream shady seed should be the stuff you go for.

We’ll take about price, the pros and cons of different varieties, review the best grass seeds in the UK, and more. So, get yourself comfortable and let us show you everything you need to know about the subject. Whether you want an ornamental lawn, a soft surface for the kids to wrestle on, or the best of both worlds In practice what this means is: to dilute the proportion of clay in a heavy soil requires very large volumes of grit or other material. It is seldom feasible to do this on anything but a small scale and, for most gardeners, other options such as raised beds, adding organic matter and choosing plants that thrive in clays are more practical. What’s more, when it grows it will be very resilient to pets and kids, and general foot traffic as long as you keep your mowing to between 25mm-40mm and don’t go shorter. Under the right conditions, you should be giving your new lawn its first ‘haircut’ by about 6 weeks after you originally sowed Well, fescues are extremely drought tolerant, and sandy soils are extremely drought-prone! Alongside this, fescues grow well in shallow conditions, they grow fine and will also tolerate close mowing. So, if you want to get those statement stripes on your sandy soils, our THRIVE: Sandy Soils mix is the best option for you.

Often there’s no easy way to shed excess water.In this case, it is sometimes worth replacing the lawn with a new one –strip off the old turf,dig over the area, incorporating plenty of organic matter to improve drainage, then rake and level. Cover with a 5cm (2in) layer of sharp sand, then either sow lawn seedor lay turf on top. First, measure the area where the seeds will be planted as a lawn to calculate the amount of seed or number of plugs you will need, depending on the manufacturer’s recommendation for your chosen type of grass and space. Dig in plenty of bulky organic matter such as manure or, ideally, composted bark, as this can make a noticeable improvement to the working properties of clayFor gardens that are not completely shaded, hardy seeds like perennial ryegrass and some fescue cultivars will be just fine. With these seeds, you will probably have to overseed once per year if the area is particularly shaded, but other than that, they are good choices. Which seeds are better suited to UK garden soil?