In July We Gave Up, Now Its Time to Gird Our Lawns and Put Matters Right.
The rain stopped, the hosepipe ban arrived and the grass turned from green to straw-coloured remarkably quickly. After briefly wondering whether anything ought to be done, we collectively decided that drinking water was probably more important than maintaining an outfield fit for Lord’s.
So we stopped watering, abandoned the mower and left the lawn to negotiate directly with the drought.
Now it is coming back.
September rain is drawing a green haze across the brown. Surviving grass is waking up, weeds are returning with rather more confidence than anybody invited, and the garden is beginning to look alive again.
But green does not necessarily mean recovered. The drought has left thin areas, dead patches and compacted ground that will become much more obvious as the surviving grass grows around them.
What we do now may not echo into eternity, but it will decide whether the lawn enters winter thickening and repairing—or merely becomes a greener version of the damaged lawn we abandoned in July.
Let It Show You What Survived or Just Get on With Saving the Day?
Do not begin by throwing every lawn treatment in the shed at it — sometimes it can be best to give the returning grass enough time and rain to reveal the true extent of the damage. Areas that appeared completely dead can revive surprisingly quickly because established lawn grasses become dormant during drought. The leaves turn brown while the crown and roots remain alive below ground, waiting for better conditions.
Once growth resumes, mow lightly with the blades set higher than usual. The object is to tidy the lawn and encourage growth, not punish it for surviving. Cutting too short removes the leaf the grass needs to rebuild its strength and exposes the soil just as weed seeds are looking for somewhere comfortable to spend the autumn.
After a couple of cuts, the picture will be clearer. Healthy areas will thicken, weak areas will remain sparse and genuinely dead patches will still be doing a convincing impression of the sand pit — and where the 'slippy slide' was, will be deader than the dead side of mars.
Maybe that could be the moment to decide what work is actually required — If you are going to adopt this gently gently method you must set a firm Decision Day (no later than the start of October) — don't risk letting matters slip until it's too late to do anything much of consequence this year.
My advice, this year is particular, your lawn has taken one hell of a beating — this is time wasted, you know what you gotta do — so gird your lawns and get on with it now....
Some Lawns Need Repair, Not Resurrection
A lawn can look terrible without requiring complete replacement.
Grass plants thicken by producing side shoots known as tillers. Given moisture, warmth and reasonable soil, surviving plants can spread into small gaps and repair much of the summer’s damage themselves. This is why patience for the first week or two (in normal years) can save a considerable amount of seed, work and theatrical despair.
However, you should be more proactive straight away - if you are just dealing with small lawns or patches read on, if like in the pictures, you have a larger lawn, perhaps skip ahead to the next section and come back to this.
Patches and Smaller Lawns
Larger bare patches need help. Remove loose dead material, scratch the soil surface, scatter an appropriate lawn-seed mixture and press it into contact with the ground. Seed sitting decoratively on top of a hard crust is more likely to feed the pigeons than rebuild the lawn. We would also recommend a mix of compost, topsoil and horticultural sand as an added accompaniment
Keep newly seeded areas consistently damp while they establish. By September, this is much easier than attempting it during summer: the soil is still warm enough for germination, the air is cooler and rainfall is doing some of the work.
Where the lawn has become thin throughout, overseeding the whole area is more useful than endlessly patching individual bald spots. Choose seed for the lawn you actually have—shade, family use, dry soil or heavy wear—not for the championship golf course you briefly imagine owning while standing in the garden centre. Augusta National has rather more staff and a slightly bigger budget - and alligators, just for a laugh — oh yeah and that fish that ate the golf ball — anyway we digress.
Buy the seed online from a specialist supplier (we have always used https://www.grassseedonline.co.uk/ - not because we are lazy and just googled it but they are actually really good) rather than automatically picking up a small box at the garden centre. It is usually considerably cheaper by weight, particularly when overseeding a substantial lawn, and the choice of mixtures for shade, drought tolerance, hard wear or finer grass are usually much better.
Measure the lawn (roughly) first then go on-line: buying three decorative cartons one after another from the local shop is an expensive way to discover that it is larger than it looks.
Open the Ground Before You Feed It
Drought does not only affect the grass. Prolonged heat and foot traffic can leave the soil beneath it hard and compacted, particularly on clay and sand.
If rain is running across the surface, collecting in hollows or failing to soak into areas where the grass remains weak, aeration will help. Push a garden fork into the ground at regular intervals and ease it backwards slightly to open channels into the soil. Larger lawns may justify mechanical aeration (marvellous machines); smaller ones require a fork, steady progress and the acceptance that this was apparently how Saturday morning was always going to end.
Scarifying (or gentle surface rotovation) removes accumulated dead grass, moss and thatch from around the living plants. It can be extremely useful, but it is best done once the soil contains some moisture. It is perhaps the most rewarding and surprising of all garden tasks —think of that first haircut after lockdown — oh yeah baby., that was a day! TIP - I tend to cut the grass on the lowest setting before doing this, it isn't crucial but everything you mow you don't then have to rake up.
Once you have given the lawn a couple of passes - vertical and horizontal - clear up all the debris to leave a nice tidy canvass. TIP #2 Try using a leaf blower to blow the debris into one central pile to make it easier to collect, once this is removed, raise the blade on your mower to normal levels and then give it a quick once over.
You will note that in the next photo it briefly became very cold very quickly or I forgot to take a picture and this is from the start of the year!
Sprinkle the Magic Dust
Once the ground is open, apply a light top-dressing and brush it down between the grass rather than burying what has survived. A mixture of screened topsoil, fine compost and horticultural sharp sand can improve the surface, introduce organic matter and help moisture and air reach the roots. Use more / of just organic material on dry, hungry soil and horticultural sand where drainage and surface compaction are the principal problems. This must be proper washed horticultural sand—not builders’ sand left over from the patio.
Top-dressing also fills small hollows and gives new seed a much better bed than the hard, dusty surface left by summer.
After scarifying, aerating and top-dressing, overseed the thin areas (if over seeding the whole lawn do this before dressing - the lawn, what you are wearing doesn't matter) and brush another very light covering of topsoil or fine compost across them. The seed needs contact with moist soil, but it must remain close enough to the surface to germinate.
After this you can put your feet up and with a good mix of Autumn sunshine, rain and heat - you should quickly begin to see results.
Still Want Something to Do?
An autumn lawn feed can support root development, but use one formulated for autumn rather than a high-nitrogen summer product. The aim is strong roots and winter resilience, not a sudden burst of soft green growth demanding twice-weekly mowing until Christmas. I would leave this at least a month if the measures above have been addressed.
Combined lawn feeds containing herbicide can feed the grass while controlling broad-leaved weeds, but they are not always the best choice where children and pets use the lawn. Products differ, so the instructions and exclusion period on the label must be followed precisely — This is where we would suggest using the local garden centre because you can chat to the staff who should be able to recommend the best product for your needs — we would have no hesitation recommending Avalon near Churt on this issue.
The gentler alternative is to remove larger weeds by hand and use an organic autumn lawn feed, often based on materials such as seaweed, poultry manure or other naturally derived nutrients. It is slower and will not conduct chemical warfare against every dandelion, but it can improve the soil and strengthen the grass without turning the lawn into a temporary exclusion zone. It also doesn't matter if you overload, so you wont get the purple stripes that you can with herbicide.
Death or Glory
Most damaged lawns will recover through scarifying, aerating, top-dressing and overseeding. Occasionally, however, there is too little worthwhile grass left to rescue.
If it is really bad, well then we can go crazy with the industrial rotovators. That really is the nuclear option though.
The remains can be cultivated into the ground, poor soil improved with fresh topsoil and compost, the surface levelled and the lawn reseeded from scratch. It is the difference between repairing the existing lawn and admitting that negotiations have failed. NB — we have yet to uncover a slither of treasure but should we, we retain the right to our 50% once the landowner and the crown have had their dibs.
This is obviously the larger and more disruptive operation, but a genuinely ruined lawn can be rebuilt surprisingly quickly in autumn while the soil is warm and natural rainfall helps the new grass establish. However unless the Somme is your thing, we would not recommend doing this after October (or before early February).
The Lawn That Returns Does Not Have to Be the Lawn You Lost
This summer has revealed which parts of the lawn struggle first.
The patch beside the hedge is too shaded. The strip beneath the tree is competing with established roots. The sunniest bank dries out before everything else, while the route between the back door and shed has been compacted by years of being the route between the back door and shed.
Simply reseeding those areas with the same grass and hoping for a different result is optimistic gardening.
Shade-tolerant or drought-resistant seed mixtures can improve difficult areas. Aerating compacted routes, improving the soil and mowing slightly higher will encourage deeper roots - or be realistic and put down some 'stepping stones'. Some permanently troublesome edges may be better widened into borders, thoroughly mulched (we haven't mentioned it for a while), planted with ground cover or something more interesting — allowed to become something other than lawn.
A recovering lawn does not need to return as an exact replica of the one that shut up shop in July. It can come back better adapted to the garden and more resilient.
Given the right preparation (previously described obvs) and mild weather, autumn seed will germinate quickly, thicken through the remaining growing season and resume its work in spring. The end of drought, bare-earth stage looks alarming, but it is only temporary.
The drought won the first round. Autumn gives the lawn a rematch — and I think it is likely this seasonal variety is something we should now expect but strengthening in the early spring and autumn gives you a chance— or just be like this god darn hero featured in the first ever good news story of the Daily Mail.
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