By regularly using a lawnmower and strimmer to keep your lawn short and weeds at bay, there’s no reason why your lawn won’t stay in a good condition (as long as it also gets enough water etc.)

However, what happens if you have children who play on the grass, or if you’ve neglected the health of your lawn for a while? The quality of your lawn will quickly drop, and you’ll be left with a tough job of repairing it.

Unless the lawn is completely ruined, with some intensive lawn care, you should be able to fix most problems. It just may take a little time.

If there’s no way to save the lawn (if the damage is too intensive), it’s usually best to start from the beginning. Start by rotating the soil by digging into the grass and turning it slightly with a shovel. Then apply new grass seeds and cover them with a layer of soil.

It goes without saying that, when you’re trying to get the grass to grow back, you need to follow an intensive lawn care routine. Use the fertiliser recommended by the garden center and keep the grass well watered.

If the lawn isn’t completely ruined, the most common form of damage is simply that people have let the lawn grow for weeks and weeks, and it’s become overrun with weeds and moss.

Here’s a quick warning: At this stage, if you simply grab your lawnmower and start to cut, you’ll rip up the grass and cause more damage!

There’s only one safe way to deal with the lawn in this kind of circumstance. That’s to grab a strimmer and cut just a bit off the top. Keep going back to it every few days until it’s back to a good height.

Grass needs nitrogen in the soil to survive. If you’ve neglected to fertilise the soil often, you may start to see the grass get a yellow tinge. If you see this, it’s an indicator of too little nitrogen in the soil.

The most simple way to deal with this is to buy a fertilisation system known as a “step-system”. They’re very easy to apply to the lawn and will help it to absorb just the right nutrients to get it back to its normal green colour.

Just a quick point – if you see any weeds in the lawn (whether it’s already in disrepair or not), always remove them at the root as quickly as possible. This stops them from spreading and taking nutrients away from the grass.

Dead patches of grass (where it’s turned dry and brown) can be a pain to deal with. The best way to repair the area is to simply start again. Rotate the soil and grass slightly, fertilise the patch and spread new seed.

It’s really important to then keep the patch well watered whilst the seeds grow into grass. If you don’t do this, especially if it’s summer, the grass will have a much harder time taking root.

If you go through all of this work to get your lawn into great condition, make sure you don’t have to do it again! Use your lawnmower and use your grass trimmer often to always keep the grass in fantastic shape.

The Petrol Strimmer Guide provides information and garden petrol strimmers and other gardening tips.