Forum

Don’t worry – few people can, and it’s not their fault. For as long as I can remember, lawn care and turf care have been treated as one and the same. And it recently occurred to me that this is why lawn care has been so neglected in the media – TV, radio, magazines etc, – aimed at the keen gardener. Let me explain.

You see, turf care is what goes on in every sports venue up and down the land. And it forms the basis of the professional training given to gardeners and turf specialists alike. I know – I was there! Through my early days, training as a green keeper, I worked for my City and Guilds qualifications, learning how to make grass grow, how to improve surfaces, making them smoother, faster, more playable. And I learned all about nutrition, pesticides, chemical applications and so on.

Now, much of this filtered through to domestic lawn care thanks to the scientific principle of the vacuum. When the first TV gardening programmes first hit our screens, the one person missing from the presenting line-up was the lawn specialist. But vacuums attract things – anything to fill the space – and gradually this particular vacuum was filled with ‘next best thing’ – snippets of advice gleaned from the professional turf world. However, the pioneering producers of these early shows were actually being very sensible in not putting forward a turf expert. You wouldn’t expect them to hire a forest management specialist to advise on topiary, so why bring in a sports arena specialist to advise on treating daises?

This has, however, left us with a difficult legacy – because the vacuum still exists. It has taken until 2014 for the producers of today’s shows and magazines to realise just how poorly served we are with relevant, specialist lawn advice. And it’s taken a very simple concept to bring this into focus, three short words – Modern Lawn Care. At last domestic gardeners and professionals alike can bring clarity to what has been a very muddled scene. At last, while acknowledging that grass of all types and in all locations needs air, water and food, we can agree that there is one fundamental difference between the sports arena and the typical garden – us. We want different things.

Any gardener hunting for sound advice has shared the same experience when it comes to lawn care – intimidating and often overwhelming instructions for creating a perfect, manicured lawn. But that’s not what most people actually want. They want the lawn that’s right for them. They want to understand how grass ‘works’, and where the bottom line really is if they simply want to keep it healthy. If they wish, they can choose to dig deeper and learn about different species, useful if they have problem areas in the garden. And of course, if they want the Wimbledon effect, they can have that, but it shouldn’t be compulsory!

So – is Modern Lawn Care simply a diluted version of traditional turf care? No. No way! Not at all! If anything, Modern Lawn Care is more specialised, not less. But it is specialised by being entirely focussed on the needs – and the demands – of the domestic garden, large or small. These are completely different to the requirements of a golf course, a tennis court or a bowling green. The plant mix is often different, the growing conditions can be different, the microclimate of each garden is always different – but most of all, the needs and expectations of the lawns’ owners are different.

For anyone wanting to train in professional garden lawn care, you will have to be patient. Existing courses are still heavily influenced by traditional turf care ideology. But for the gardeners themselves the future looks a little brighter. With luck, your TV and radio shows will soon begin taking some serious interest in modern lawn care, and you can also discover it for yourself in my book, Modern Lawn Care, published in early summer. In the meantime, when your neighbours next try to outshine you in the over-the-fence lawn debate, why not test them – see if they can tell the difference between turf care and lawn care.