It's all in the seed mix

If you want to sow the perfect lawn, you need to think about how your lawn is used and make sure you pick the right seed mix for your plot.

DO you really know your festucas from your bents and your ryegrass from your browntops? Fortunately, with such advancements in lawn-seed mixes, gardeners don’t need to concern themselves too much about which grasses make up a seed mix. All the hard work is done for us, and seed mixes are labelled in such a way that little thought is required.

For those of you planning to sow a new lawn or repair a lawn this month, you’ll need to spend a few moments considering how your lawn is used and what you expect from it. Most of us are guilty of underestimating how wonderfully accommodating grass is – not many other plants will put up with being walked on day in and day out.

Ask yourself these questions: do children or pets play on the lawn? Is the lawn cut very short? Does the lawn have to compete for light and water from overhanging trees? Or is the lawn hardly walked on and more of a showpiece? Assessing this will allow you to decide which mix is right for your plot.

Last year, I had a tour of the headquarters of Johnsons Lawn Seed in Worcestershire, where they have been creating lawn-seed mixes for 200 years. Here they make bespoke mixes and provide the seed for many well-known sporting grounds.

If you’re not as enthusiastic about the different types of grasses in a mix, don’t despair as Johnsons has a handy mixture selector on its website ( johnsonslawnseeds.com). You can choose from tuff grass, quick grass, shady grass or even a wildflower meadow mix, and the selector will tell you how each mix performs when it comes to speed of germination, resistance to wear and tear, and more.

Tried and tested