The world has always been full of advice, and thanks to this big, interwebby, netty thing, it’s now fuller than ever with people telling you how, why or what to do. ?
It’s the same for gardening and growing as it is for anything else; once upon a time, you might look in a book, ask a ruddy faced rustic chap leaning over a fence or, more recently, presenting a show on the television, or even the lady in your local gardening centre, who would tell you exactly when to chit your potatoes, compost your rhubarb or cultivate your plums, possibly in a comforting rural accent.
Anyhoo. This time of year, we are thinking hard about our lawns. Or are we? Do we go for stripes? Should we cut up close and personal? Should we strim the edges? Should we bother at all or should we go down the pub and sink a few pints of Old Cobblers Wriggly Ferret?
Well, there are more reasons to mow the green stuff than just looks, not matter how tempting and attractive stripes might be as the spring gets into its stride.
So here are a few snippets of surprising information we think you won’t find in many other places, certainly not from celebrity gardeners or your local garden centre. Three reasons to mow your lawn that are not directly linked to grass health, botany or even gardening as such.
1. There Goes The Neighbourhood – Property Prices
A well-kept lawn means a well-kept house and a well-kept house is always going to say ‘desirable residence’. If you are the sort of person who likes to keep your furniture on the front lawn, with maybe a burned out car or two, your property price is definitely going to hit a downward curve, but a neat, smartly mowed garden, front and back, keeps those prices up. Not only that, when it comes to selling the house, a newly cut lawn falls into the ‘how to make your property more attractive to potential buyers’ category. Rather like re-decorating, tidying away your kids’ toys and making sure the smell of freshly brewed coffee permeates the homestead when the potential buyers arrive, a crisp, smart and attractive new-mown lawn makes people happy, relaxes them and helps them think of your house as ‘home’. Contrariwise, your neighbours may well get pretty upset if you leave your grass too long.
2. Disappearing Dogs – Keeping an Eye on your Pets
These days, it’s not unusual to see certain well-to-do ladies carrying small dogs around in their designer handbags. In fact, it’s way more than a trend and has been around for some time. Now, handbag or no handbag, all puny pooches are going to need exercise and relief at some point, but there is an inherent problem. If you have any tiny or miniature dog, from a Chihuahua to a Yorky, and your grass resembles the jungles of the Amazon, it would be very easy for them to get lost in the grass, causing all sorts of distress to what are, lets face it, often quite nervy creatures to begin with. We have come across a number of people who mow their lawn mainly so they can see their pets gambolling on the turf, and it definitely qualifies as a surprising reason to whip out the mower.
3. Drop and Give Me Twenty Centimetres – Exercise
In these sedentary days of Playstations, HD TV and android tablets, it’s very easy to lie on your Lazy Boy or slump on your sofa killing pigs on Angry Birds or building people with your Simms 3 and completely forget a deeply fundamental part of life. Walking. Yes, moving one foot in front of another, otherwise known as ‘a bit of a walk’ has been good exercise ever since the first caveman popped down to his local shop for a bag of wild boar scratchings and a copy of the Daily Mammoth. And if you don’t want to go wandering down the high street, or promenading around the park, what better way to give your joints, limbs and muscles a work-out than pushing an old school cylinder lawnmower across your sward, perhaps one with a roller to give you smart stripes. Many people opt for a push cylinder roller mower for exercise purposes, as it will make you work a bit, although even a self-propelled rotary model will give you a decent walkabout. The main thing, whatever your mower, is the walking. Get those lungs going, get striding across that lawn at a good pace, take in a bit of fresh air and hear a bit of birdsong before you go back in the house and create another virtual civilisation on your laptop. Get some exercise, and earn your stripes!
You may have your own surprising reasons for mowing the lawn, perhaps you love the smell of new-mown grass in the morning, you are always losing your car keys in the grass or you like to play championship croquet in your back garden. Whatever the reason, if you want to share it with us, drop it to our facebook page, www.facebook.com/mowdirect
