GUIDE: How to bring your lawn in Carlow to life

Leave bare ground

It can be tempting to try and seed over or plant up bare patches, but a few areas without any planting gives space for insects such as mining bees to burrow down and build their nesting tunnels.

No need to feed

Feeding your established lawn isn’t necessary to get a luscious-looking space, and is also an intensive use of money and resources that might not pay off. For short patches of grass, such as paths through the lawn, you could save yourself time and leave grass clippings to add some nutrients.

Longer areas need clippings collected at the end of the season, but the longer roots of tall species will give these grasses better access to nutrients and water deep in the soil.

Love your earthworms

Gardeners can collect the fine soil from worm casts to add to potting media, or leave these patches of earth for new plants to establish within the lawn.

The worms under your turf can help to aerate the soil, recycle nutrients and are food for blackbirds, hedgehogs and many other animals.

The grass isn’t always greener

If you want a green area in the garden then you might be better off looking somewhere other than grasses, particularly as our summers are more prone to drought with the changing climate.

Yarrow and plantain will stay green during drought periods while also providing food for pollinators, so are ideal for welcoming more wildlife into the garden and keeping green shades through the summer.

Embrace a mossy harvest

Removing moss can involve a lot of hard work, but there are ways to make the most of your moss. Lots of birds incorporate moss into their nests, so leave any removed material out for them to collect.

Lawn moss also makes a good base for seasonal wreaths, so you could recycle it into crafting material.

But leaving the moss will add damper micro-habitats into your lawn – perfect for a diversity of microfauna like rotifers, free-living nematodes and tardigrades (known as water bears) that contribute to nutrient cycling and thus healthy soils and plants.

Welcome fungi

The little brown mushrooms on your lawn won’t be doing any harm to the garden, and lots are especially beautiful when the light passes through their translucent gills. Many species will even be beneficial, recycling decaying matter back into the soil.

Experience nature

Just being outside in nature can help restore us after a period of stress, and what better way to experience this than walking barefoot on the grass?

Prevent floods

Any lawn is better than nothing – compared to a garden of hard surfaces, one covered by a lawn and plants will help prevent flash flooding locally, reduce air and noise pollution and have a cooling effect. The wilder you let your lawn grow, the bigger the benefit to nature and planet.