My grandfather has always been a lover of his grass and his top lawn is a site for sore eyes, this love has been passed onto me and whilst my lawn is only half the size of his I do like a well kept lawn.

Grass and lawns

Grass is a plant which grows evenly and spreads very quickly, it does prefer dry and any ground which is prone to waterlog will cause the roots of the grass to fail to establish and lead to other undesirable plants to move in. The perfect conditions is a warm, dry spot with good drainage and without too much of a slope, if all these conditions are met then grass can be trained to grow as a uniform mat and become a pleasure to the eye. So my grandfathers grass lawn is set in the perfect grass growing conditions of east Lincolnshire, dry, warm and flat however I live in Sheffield which is wet, cold and hilly so my lawn is prone to flooding.

The answer

Well one is to big out the whole plot, give the soil a decent amount of sand and grit to improve drainage and a decent amount of rich loamy soil or you can buy an aerator which can be used to put holes in the soil to improve drainage. One costs a fortune, is back breaking and the other costs about £15 and takes a few minutes every week guess which one I went for?

So the aerator, as with all aerators it is a large set of metal pegs inserted into an elongated D frame. The top of the D is reinforced and allows for pressure to be applied inserting the pegs into the group. Pushing the pegs in will improve the drainage but you don't want to overdo either in terms of too many holes or too deep because again they would lead to water getting into the grasses root system. This piece of equipment has 5 pegs about 2 inches apart and if applied to a wet area will allow the water to be drained into the soil.


As with all pieces of garden equipment you do wonder if you need to buy it as a rake or garden fork would do the job as efficiently but in this case a fork can be overused and cause too deep a hole and a rake too shallow. So if you have a big lawn prone to bogginess then an aerator is useful if you want to prevent moss growing in your lawn and to try and gain a uniform lawn. So £15 might seem a bit of a punt for a piece of equipment which on the surface seems a bit of a niche market but if you have a large lawn then it's money very well spent, an aerator used every 1-2 weeks will significantly improve the quality of your lawn.

The parasene aerator is available at most decent stores.