How do I revive my trampled lawn?

One of a lawn’s greatest attributes is its toughness. Try playing football over your dahlias every day between 3.30 and 4pm, trampling over your herb bed every time you want to get the bikes out of the shed, or letting your dog use your box topiary ball as a toilet (or telling your dog not to use it as a toilet, but your dog going ahead and doing it anyway). All would very quickly keel over and die. A lawn puts up with all of such abuse pretty merrily, growing strong and thick despite us treating it for much of the time like a particularly heavy-duty sports mat.

Eventually, though, even lawns fail to thrive under constant trampling. You will notice that small bare areas appear along the walk to the shed, or near goal mouths, then bigger, and bigger. This suggests that your lawn needs some attention, or at the very least a break. And this is partly the problem with well-used areas: they get worn because they are well used, and it is very hard to break the pattern long enough to allow them to mend. So the first step is to do exactly that: move the goal posts, shift the route of the path. Then you need to track down a particularly hardwearing turf. This is easier to find if you grow from seed: look for any seed mix that is labelled as “hard wearing” or similar (I found the aptly named Dogs and Sprogs from Lawn UK). They generally contain a mixture of dwarf perennial rye grass and creeping red fescue, which together form a particularly sturdy lawn, if not one that is especially fine and delicate in appearance. By this stage of dog and child ownership you are most probably beyond such niceties anyway.

The trouble with seed is that it takes a while to germinate, grow, and become sturdy enough to be abused again, and will put your normally heavily-used area out of action for some time. Scratch up the surface, sow the seed, rake it in and water it, before covering it with something that will discourage thundering footsteps for several weeks. A piece of horticultural fleece pinned over it will remind those who care about such things, but a more physical barrier may be required if dogs and small people are involved. Turf, pre-grown in someone’s field, is a far more instant solution. Generally the choice isn’t as great as with seed, but again, look for tougher mixes. You will need to water and keep them off for a couple of weeks but your football pitch will be back in action pretty quick.

If you have done all this and the problem just repeats itself, do consider giving up. Make a proper path to the shed, create a turf-free area around the goal posts and cover it with wood chips. Accept that there are stages in your life when you may have a perfect lawn, but this isn’t one of them.