Natural Grass

A sod lawn is only as good as the day before it went down. Rolled out over compacted clay it roots shallow, dries out, and thins in its first summer no matter how carefully it is watered. The work that matters happens first: strip the old surface, break up the compaction, grade so the lawn drains away from the house and sits flush with its edges, amend the topsoil, then lay tight with staggered joints and roll it in. After that it is water. New sod needs a genuinely heavy schedule for the first fortnight and a gradually longer, less frequent one after — which is why we set the irrigation and hand you the schedule rather than wishing you luck. Seed is the cheaper route where a lawn can be off-limits for a couple of months; sod is the answer where it cannot.