The Royal Horticultural Society Chelsea Flower Show starts next week in the grounds of the world famous Chelsea Hospital in south west London.
This year they're celebrating Chelsea's centenary with a superb line-up of show gardens to give you great ideas to try at home.
The magnificent displays in the Great Pavilion will show off exciting new plants alongside favourites from 1913 and, on an historical theme, look out for our display of 100 years in pictures, a spell-binding look at how Chelsea style has evolved through the decades. Finally, discover the Artisan Retreats, where well-known artists and designers give us great ideas for outdoor living areas.
Lawntreatment.co.uk's lawn treatment and care web site provides the complete lawn service
elements of lawns and their care within their current operational
territorial limits.
Their web site has recently undergone a bit of treatment itself. One feature of the site is an automated online lawn treatment estimate facility where you select the seasonal service and put in the number of square metres of your lawn and hey presto, you get an accurate estimate of lawn treatment costs on the screen. You do need Flash installed to view it.
The Team at The Lawn Company possesses a growing passion for lawns and
their long-term care.
There is no one-off treatment to a lot of lawn
ailments. At The Lawn Company, they realise that maintenance often
needs to be bespoke, or tailored to individual lawns’ precise
requirements. From a simple lawn weed and feed to a complete lawn
renovation or installation of a tired or worn out lawn, the team at The
Lawn Company can help.
They know there is no one-off treatment to a lot of lawn ailments. At The Lawn Company, they realise that maintenance often needs to be bespoke, or tailored to individual lawns’ precise requirements.
We all live busy lives and often the garden and lawn come at the bottom of the pile when it comes to time allocation.
Any money spent on a lawn is a good investment so long as it follows the flow chart of lawn care science and the timing is correct relative to the lawn's natural growth cycle.
Dogs are ingesting, inhaling and otherwise being exposed to garden and lawn chemicals that have been associated with bladder cancer, according to a new study.
The paper, which will appear in the July issue of Science of the Total Environment, also found that wind could carry the chemicals to untreated properties. The researchers also found that dogs, once contaminated by the chemicals, can transfer them to their owners.
The chemicals are common herbicides containing the following: 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D), 4-chloro-2- methylphenoxypropionic acid (MCPP) and/or dicamba.
We have all seen it - stripy lawns where a lawn fertiliser has been incorrectly applied. A bit like the picture of the lawn shown here. It is important to learn how to fertilise a lawn so that you encourage even and consistent growth and colour and plant health. The problem arises when you have the job of trying to match in the light and dark bands of grass without over application of a lawn fertiliser.
CastClear, the new lawn worm cast suppressant is being sold on the shelves of some of the top 100 retail garden centres.
Horticulture Week Magazine and Online has recently published the top 100 garden centres based on turnover with Longacres Garden Centre in Bagshot, Surrey coming top with annual sales of £16M and Scotsdales Garden Centre in Cambridge coming a close second with annual sales of £14.87M. Both are stockists of CastClear from The Lawn Company as are eight others in the top 20 Garden Centres.
The European Commission will restrict the use of pesticides linked to bee deaths by researchers, despite a split among EU states on the issue.
There is great concern across Europe about the collapse of bee populations.
The new EU restrictions will apply from December this year for three neonicotinoid pesticides - clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiametoxam - which are used to treat bee-attractive crops such as rape seed.
St George is famed for slaying a dragon in popular imaginations but most people know very little about his past and his somewhat obscure links to England.
An Englishman's home is his castle and the carpet of the room outside is the lawn so that's the tenuis link to St George!
A young father is learning to walk again after accidentally shooting himself through the foot with a shotgun.
Landscape gardener Jamie Cameron, 29, was carrying the large weapon on a hunting trip in Muddiford in Devon when he slipped on wet grass.
His father Eddie works as a police officer at the local station and anxiously awaited more details after the emergency call was patched through to his station.
It's managed to survive without one for five millenia, but the owners of Stonehenge are now on the lookout for a general manager to run famous World Heritage Site.
The successful candidate, whose 'office' will be the giant pre-historic stone circle in Wiltshire, will be required to oversee the 5,000-year-old monument's 'exciting new future'.
When lawn owners make liquid or chemical applications to their lawn, they are faced with a big dilemma - how can they mark where they have sprayed already?
Professional Turf Managers have been using Spray Pattern Indicator Dyes for decades but these have never been widely available before to the amateur lawn owner.
The grass vigour and growth has really changed over the past week after a bit of warmer weather and less wind chill. Our office lawn has coloured up quite naturally on it's own and it has now received it's first mowing session to trim the grass plants and tidy it up. Looks great already!
The best things you can do to a winter bound lawn is, only when the grass starts to naturally colour up with some warmer temperatures, is to make an application of a spring lawn fertiliser and some Soluble Iron. This is what will be happening to our office lawn this week. Whoopee.
You may remember your Grandad mixing his own fertiliser consisting of Sulphate of Ammonia, Dried Blood and Fish and Bone Meal - sounds ghastly and it probably was.
It is still possible to purchase straight Sulphate of Ammonia as a lawn fertiliser and good old-fashioned Growmore. These age old Nitrogen sources are likely to scorch your lawn, especially Sulphate of Ammonia as it has a Nitrogen content of 21% straight Nitrogen - a generating real flush of growth and then the benefit quickly reduces and is gone.
There are three primary turf grass nutrients - On a typical lawn fertiliser label, you will see an analysis written like this - 22-5-10. This equates to Nitrogen 22, Phosphorus 5 and K for Potassium 10. Nitrogen expressed as a N on the label analysis, N 22 in our case.
If you have a lot of weeds that have over wintered in your lawn, now is almost the time to think about controlling the weeds in your lawn.
You normally get two periods of weed activity in a normal year. The broadleaf weeds such as Cat's Ear, Plantains, Daisies, Dandelions to name a view of them will easily over winter in the turf. These need to be killed early on before the second turf weed season starts when you get the Red, White Clovers, Yellow Suckling Clovers and Trefoils appearing in around May and June time.
Why do selective herbicides kill weeds and not the grass? The internal biologial make up of weeds and grasses is different. The weeds, like trees and shrubs have Cambium Cells.
The Team at The Lawn Shop have been frantically getting ready for the arrival of spring. The sunshine of yesterday has send a flurry of email and orders for lawn care products from lawn owners keen to get their lawns out of the winter doldrums.
The Lawn Products shop bridge the gap between professional lawn care products and domestic lawn care products. This means that you too can get your hands on some professional grade slow release lawn fertilisers similiar to what the lawn treatment companies are using for self application.
Scarification or Scarifying is an essential part of cultured turf or lawn management. It is carried out with hand tools such as a Spring Bok Hand Rake or, for larger areas, purpose built machinery called a Scarifier. The aim of scarifying is to produce a healthy vertical type growth of desirable grasses, to improve the turf surface and appearance. Very light scarification (like with a drag brush or rake on a cylinder mower) is used simply to raise the leaves of the grass in the sward before mowing, to leave a smarter looking finish.
Located on the outskirts of Cheshire, Bents Home and Garden is more than just a garden centre. Passion, experience and an understanding of exclusive living have earned our family-run business a reputation for quality, experience and innovation.
Their innovation has led them to become CastClear stockists in a bid to help their thousands of customers get rid of their lawn worm casts.
After the snow, wind and rain of the past month, the lawns in the South East of the UK are slowly waking up, albeit it looking a bit sorry for themselves and struggling to maintain some colour but still surviving the winter!
If more snow and sleet arrives the lawns will take a further knock back until it warms up. If the air temperature outside is minus 1, then there could be a wind chill of minus 5 and such temperature are not helpful for lawns and gardens generally.
CastClear is a NEW organic and unique combination of nutrient materials that have been clearly shown to reduce worm-cast levels on lawns large and small.
It is unique in using a surfactant system that moves the nutrient into the upper soil structure and fixes it there providing good persistence of deterrent effect until breaking down to natural nutrients absorbed by plant roots.
We get a lot of emails and also comments from lawn owners seeking advice on their lawns and this lawn advice blog is our initial technical outlet and first prot of call for lawn owners seeking lawn advice.
There are over 550 technical articles to help you with your lawn so please do use the lawn advice blog search facility before posting a comment or emailing us as you are going to find the answer to the most common lawn problems from the confort of your armchair or desk.
When you cannot find the answer, please feel free to post a comment and this will find us and we can respond on this blog or privately. The question and answers email below is a good example of the help we provided to one recent lawn owner who had posted a comment about a soggy lawn -
The soil underneath your lawn is made up of many elements such as soil air, soil organic matter, soil nutrients, soil micro organisms, soil structures but most of all soil water.
Now I am sure that water is the last thing on your mind currently but I was explaining the fundamentals of soil water to a client who had a soggy lawn and thought that it would be worth sharing it on this lawn advice blog.
The form water takes in the soil depends on a variety of factors, including the existing moisture content of the soil and the structure and texture of the soil. Water may be divided into four groups:
New Hopetoun Gardens Garden Centre is situated to the west of Edinburgh, Dougal Philip the owner, first set-up his garden centre over 30 years ago. New Hopetoun Gardens has grown well over the years. lawn specialist,castclear
Now, with a well-stocked gift shop, their popular Orangery tearoom, and a fantastic reputation as one of Edinburgh’s best-stocked garden centres, New Hopetoun Garden Centre continue to focus on variety, choice and quality.
They have recently taken stock of the new lawn worm cast solution called CastClear. CastClear is a NEW organic and unique combination of nutrient materials that have been clearly shown to reduce worm-cast levels on lawns large and small. castclear.com
Grasses come from the plant family Gramineae. There are over 10,000 species of grasses although only some of these have commercial use in the development of lawns and professional sports turf.
All grasses come from the Class of plants called Monocotyledons – that is they only produce one seed leaf from a seed. Their internal structures, root structure, stem and leaf structures are different to weeds, shrubs and trees.
The Team at Henry Street Garden Centre absolutely love everything to do with gardens, plants, pets and the outdoor lifestyle, and they're renowned for their horticultural expertise. Roses are their specialist subject, and people come to buy them from all over southern England and beyond. They have been growing roses for nearly 100 years and have over 350 varieties! Their enthusiasm and dedication have earnt them an unrivalled reputation throughout the region for their friendly, helpful service and willingness to share their knowledge with customers.
Knowing the size of your lawn is vital should you wish to care for it correctly.
Measuring a lawn is so important when making an assessment on how much fertiliser to buy and then ensure that you have applied the correct amount of product over the given area and this applies to granules and liquids.
The ultimate aim is to arrive at the total number of square metres of the lawn or each lawn and the total of all of the lawns making up the garden.
The Horticultural Industry hates an early Easter as the weather can be so unpredictable and the past few weeks have been just that. The nightime temperatres are going to be feels like minus 8 or 9 with some sharp frosts over the coming Easter weekend.
The majority of lawn owners have simply not mown their lawns this spring yet as there has not been the opportunities of finer and dryer weather at weekends. Some lawns have small pockets of snow on them in rural areas.
It is always important to have the correct tool for the job and lawn care is no exception.
Doing a job is all about making life easy for yourself and if you do not want to employ a lawn professional to perform a particular lawn care maintenance task then get yourself a selection of groundsman tools to make the intended task flow better and more often than not quicker.
One particular tool taken from the selection that The Lawn Shop sell is a Trulute. This clever tool will allow you to spread and work in top dressing materials with speed and ease and save your back too.
When lawn owners make liquid or chemical applications to their lawn, they are faced with a big dilemma - how can they mark where they have sprayed already?
Professional Turf Managers have been using Spray Pattern Indicator Dyes for decades but these have never been widely available before to the amateur lawn owner.
Turf Managers also use what is called a foam bout marker on their large sprayers which leaves a trace blob of foam down the travelled run of the fairway so that the operator can match up with the last pass on the return run. The foam soon disappears after an hour via sunlight.
Recent Comments