There's nothing like a lawn to bring the various disparate elements in a garden together. It's easy on the eye and helps highlight other more ornamental features within in the garden. Best of all, it adds much needed space to the garden and provides evergreen continuity too, but a lawn shouldn't be viewed as a growing carpet that looks after itself. Think of it as thousands of tiny plants crammed together that need to be cared for like other garden plants, even though they are not quite as demanding. The great thing about a lawn is that anybody can grow one successfully regardless of their experience or love of gardening. A lawn is easy to look after and continues to look good if it's not abused too much

Do you really want a lawn?
The first thing to consider when covering the floor area of a garden is what finish suits you and your garden best. Although a lawn is the traditional 'material', it requires looking after and is less suitable in certain circumstances, especially tiny, restricted areas, dense shade, hot dry spots and on steep slopes where it's difficult to maintain. In these situations, groundcover plants, landscaping materials or even wildflowers might be a better option.

Which type of grass?

If you decide you do want a lawn, the next step is to consider which type. Traditional bowling-green style lawns with a perfect striped finish may look great but they are a lot of work to maintain. Real bowling greens are hard, flat surfaces cropped practically daily during the growing season down to 1cm (1/2in) high with additional seasonal maintenance that would tax even the most enthusiastic of gardeners. For this reason most people opt for a 'family' lawn that contains a mixture of compact, hard-wearing grasses. These are much easier to look after, requiring mowing weekly during the growing season and an annual feed and rake for the best possible finish.

Elstow Landscapes use Rolawn turf. Rolawn's unique quality starts with the selection of top rated grass seed. There are thousands of varieties of grass seed. They can't all be the same. Meticulous care was taken to ensure that 100% of each mixture used for Rolawn's turf contains seed types that have been individually tested by the Sports Turf Research Institute.