I have been reading again – this is a dangerous activity as we know as it opens up new horizons – and this time it was about lawns.

I know that doesn’t sound like an exciting read but it was about grass-free lawns – there, I knew that would throw you!

To quote the author of the piece, Dr Lionel Smith, the lawn as we know it is a monoculture and any invading flowering species are seen as weeds and treated as such.

He argues that the dead-flat green lawn is a waste of space, not only being useless for wildlife but also being high maintenance and requiring much scattering of feed and mosskiller.

He asks what would happen if the ‘grass’ element were removed and the weeds, carefully selected, were allowed to flourish instead?

If this were to happen, the mowing regime of 20-30 cuts per year would be reduced to about seven. The diverse community of plants including white clover, Pratia (lawn lobelia), Ajuga (bugle) Pilosella (fox-and–cubs), Prunella (self-heal) means pollinators visited the lawns 80 times more than they did the traditional grass lawn.

A mature grass-free lawn can absorb rainfall three times faster than bare soil and twice as fast as a traditional lawn and stay greener for longer in a drought.

I found this all very interesting. I have cut more lawns in my time than I’ve had hot dinners and although I can see the argument that the green well-kept lawn ‘sets the rest of the garden off’, I can also see the sense in the argument they offer nothing in the way of biodiversity.

That said, let’s turn to the traditional lawn. September is the ideal time to sow seed. Scrape the surface with a rake and seed, water well and stretch some thread or bird-scaring tape on canes around it. If you have moss, you have problems of poor drainage and too much shade.

You can treat moss with a killer but it will return if you don’t treat the cause.

Compaction is a problem on a well-used lawn so spiking and aerating helps to get a bit of air in there – use a hollow-tine aerator or your garden fork and shove it in as far as you can; waggle it about and brush in some top dressing or some compost.

If you have moss, it needs to be killed off before you do anything else. You can use a combined autumn feed and mosskiller. Once the moss goes black, rake it all off and re-seed the area. Do not use summer lawn feed. It is high in nitrogen which encourages leaf growth. What you want at this time of year is root growth and that needs phosphorus, hence the autumn feed.

It’s also a good time to turf. We don’t hold turf in stock as it goes ‘off’ quickly, especially if left rolled up with the grass going yellow on the inside and the soil drying out on the outside. We can order it in but you will need to have a decent square metreage to make it worthwhile. If you just want a small strip, do look around and unroll what is there – if you don’t like the look of it, leave it alone!