What is the best Looking Grass for Lawns

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder so the nicest grass for your lawn in the UK will be an individual choice. It is important however to ensure the grass you choose is also suitable for planting on your soil and in your garden environment.

The Fine Grass Lawn

Here you’re looking for very fine bristle type grasses, fescues and bent grasses, that would be used for golf greens, bowling greens and croquet lawns. There would be no flat leaved grasses just thin bristle type leaves. These look wonderful but maintenance is high as they show up any imperfection, weed or weed grass. We suggest this is for the lawn enthusiast and for relatively small to medium sized lawns under 250m2 to keep maintenance time reasonable.

Our Ornamental Grass Seed Mixture is ideal for this type of lawn but ideally on sandy or sandy loam soils in good sun.

The Stripiest Lawn

If you love stripes and your mower has a roller, then a mixture with a good amount of rye grass is what you need. Rye grass for lawns is of the dwarf variety being very thin flat leaved and is used on tennis courts so is also hard wearing. It is unique in that the top of the leaf is matt and the underside is shiny. Therefore, when rolled it produces alternating dull and shiny stripes. Now you know how to do it you can do it yourself with the following Lawnsmith mixtures:

• Easygreen: 50% rye grass for a hard wearing lawn also suitable for clay soil
• Classic: 30% rye grass so still stripes well but has a good amount of finer grasses for greater appeal
• Shadygreen: 20% rye grass for stripes in the shady parts of the garden
• Staygreen: 30% rye grass for good stripes where a hard wearing lawn tolerant of drier conditions is required

The Gardeners Lawn

For those hobby gardeners who want a great looking lawn with a degree of fineness without the work of an ornamental lawn that also stripes well and grows moderately. Ideally this would contain rye grass for stripes, fescues and smooth stalked meadow grass (same as bluegrass) for fineness and all round adaptability.

Our Classic Grass Seed Mixture is perfect for this.

The Greenest Lawn

The deeper greens come from two things; the grass type and the amount of nitrogen you feed the lawn. So for the darkest of greens you want a rye grass and tall fescue mixture maintained with a seasonal supply of slow release fertiliser. This will also produce a drought tolerant hard wearing lawn though the downside is broader leaved grasses in the lawn.

Our Staygreen Grass Seed Mixture is perfect for this.