Landscape maintenance

Once a garden or a piece of grounds is laid out, the work turns to keeping it that way. Lawns need cutting, hedges need trimming, and paths and borders need looking after through the year.

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Mowing through the year

For a neat lawn, the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) suggests mowing every week or two from March to October. Through the summer that means roughly weekly, and less often during a drought. Over winter the grass rarely needs cutting, unless the weather stays mild and it keeps growing.

Each cut should take off no more than one third of the height, in the RHS's advice. Ordinary domestic grass can sit at 13 to 25mm through the summer, and be left longer in spring and autumn, at up to 40mm. On very soft, wet or frozen ground, or in a cold, drying wind, the mowing should wait.

Some owners leave part of a lawn long for wildflowers. Plantlife, a wildflower charity, runs a campaign called No Mow May. The RHS explains it as putting the mower away in early May and, ideally, leaving the grass until August so that more kinds of plant can flower.

Autumn work on a lawn

The RHS puts the main autumn lawn tasks in September or October, when the weather is mild and damp, and says they need not all be done every year. Scarifying means raking out thatch, the old clippings, moss and other debris on the soil surface. Aerating means spiking the lawn so air and water reach the roots.

Both can be done with hand tools. The RHS says aerating every two to three years is enough for most lawns. On clay or waterlogged soil it suggests a hollow tined aerator every three to four years, followed by a top dressing raked into the holes.

Edges, borders and feeding

In spring, the RHS suggests cutting an 8cm gutter round the lawn with a half moon edging iron or a flat spade. That helps stop grass creeping into the borders. Long handled edging shears then tidy the edge after each mow.

The RHS says most lawns grow well without feeding. Where a lawn is growing poorly, it suggests a spring or summer feed in mid spring, at the rate on the pack, and only as much as the grass needs.

Finding someone to do it

The British Association of Landscape Industries (BALI) is the trade association for landscape professionals, from design and building through to maintenance. It has over 900 accredited members across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

BALI says it vets a business before it becomes an accredited member, and reviews members again to keep membership going. Its directory can be searched by town or postcode, and by service, such as grounds maintenance, hard landscaping, irrigation and invasive weed control.

Weedkillers and sprays

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) says anyone using a professional plant protection product, such as a weedkiller, must hold a recognised specified certificate. The one alternative is working under the direct supervision of a certificate holder, as part of training.

HSE calls it good practice to warn people living or working nearby before spraying. For a few products the law requires it, and the product label says so.

Products authorised for home garden use are different. HSE says a home gardener using one in their own garden needs no training to do so.

Hedges, nests and the law

In England and Wales, section 1 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 makes it an offence for a person who intentionally "takes, damages or destroys the nest of any wild bird while that nest is in use or being built". For a few species listed in the Act, the nest is protected at any time. The offences are subject to exceptions set out elsewhere in that part of the Act.

Scotland has its own version of the section. It also covers acting recklessly, and interfering with a nest while it is in use or being built.

In England, separate rules protect hedgerows on or next to farmland. GOV.UK says you must not cut or trim a hedgerow covered by them from 1 March to 31 August. They cover a hedgerow more than 20 metres long, with gaps of 20 metres or less, or a shorter one that meets another hedgerow at each end. Farmland here includes grazing land, market gardens, nursery grounds and allotments.

Some hedgerows are exempt. A hedgerow inside the grounds of a house (its curtilage) is exempt, and so is one marking the boundary of those grounds, on both sides. Other exemptions include a hedgerow overhanging a road or path that blocks the way or puts people using it at risk. Another is a hedgerow that is dead, diseased or damaged and likely to fall onto a road or path. Anyone relying on an exemption must cut only what the exemption needs, and keep a record of the work.

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