Which grass seed should I use for my lawn?

Almost all UK lawn seed is a blend of four things: perennial ryegrass, fescues, bent grasses and sometimes smooth-stalked meadow grass. The picture on the bag tells you nothing; the species list on the back tells you everything. The single decision that matters is whether the lawn will be walked on, because that decides whether you need ryegrass in it.

Step by step

1. Decide how the lawn will be used.Children, dogs, football and garden furniture mean wear, and wear means ryegrass. A lawn that is only looked at can afford the finer grasses that look better and take no punishment at all.
2. Understand perennial ryegrass.Tough, fast to germinate, hard-wearing, recovers from damage, tolerates a wide range of soils. Coarser in the leaf than fescues, though modern amenity cultivars are far finer than the agricultural ones. This is the backbone of virtually every family lawn.
3. Understand the fescues.Fine-leaved, drought-tolerant, tolerant of low fertility and poor soil, and the group with the best shade tolerance. Slow to establish and slow to recover from wear. Creeping red fescue and hard fescue are the common ones in shade and general mixes.
4. Understand the bents.Very fine, very low-growing, tolerant of close mowing. They belong on golf greens and formal lawns cut below 15mm, and they need a level of feeding, watering and maintenance most people do not want to provide.
5. Understand smooth-stalked meadow grass.Spreads by underground runners, so it knits and self-repairs. Slow to establish from seed but valuable in a hard-wearing mixture for exactly that reason.
6. Read the back of the bag.The species and percentages are printed there. 'Hard wearing' with no ryegrass in the list is marketing. A shade mixture that is mostly ryegrass will not perform in shade.
7. Match the mixture when overseeding.A ryegrass mix sown into a fine fescue lawn shows as a coarser, different-coloured patch for a couple of seasons. Look at what you have before buying what you add.
8. Check the sowing rate and the date on the bag.New lawns need roughly double the rate of overseeding. Grass seed loses viability with age, so buy fresh rather than using the half bag from three years ago and blaming the weather.
9. Consider whether you want a lawn at all in deep shade.No grass mixture succeeds below about three hours of direct sun. A shade mixture buys you tolerance, not a miracle.

Tips

• Bird-repellent seed dressings do reduce losses on newly sown areas, but a net or a scattering of top dressing over the seed does more.
• Ryegrass germinates in about a week; fescues and bents can take three. A mixture looks patchy at first because the ryegrass comes first — do not judge it at ten days.
• Cheap seed is usually cheap because it is agricultural ryegrass rather than an amenity cultivar. It grows fast, coarse and clumpy, and you will regret it every time you mow.

Common mistakes

• Buying by the picture on the bag — The species list is on the back and it is the only part that determines how the lawn performs. 'Luxury' and 'premium' are not defined terms.
• Sowing a fine ornamental mix on a family lawn — Fescues and bents do not recover from wear. It will look beautiful for a season and then be worn to soil along every route people walk.
• Using leftover seed of unknown age — Viability drops with time and poor storage. Poor germination then gets blamed on the weather, the soil or the birds.

Alternatives

• Hard-wearing ryegrass mixture: Perennial ryegrass with fescue and often smooth-stalked meadow grass. The right default for any lawn that gets used. Fast to establish, recovers from damage, copes with a family.
• Shade-tolerant mixture: Fescue-dominated, sometimes with wood meadow grass. The best available option under trees and on north sides, but it needs at least three hours of light to be worth sowing.
• Fine ornamental mixture: Fescues and bents, no ryegrass. Beautiful, fine-textured, close-mown and completely intolerant of children, dogs and drought neglect.
• Flowering lawn or micro-clover mixture: Grass with clover or low-growing flowering species. Stays greener in drought, needs less feeding because clover fixes nitrogen, and supports pollinators — but it will not stay a uniform green sward and weedkillers cannot be used on it.
• Wildflower meadow mixture: A different thing entirely, sown on low-fertility soil and cut once or twice a year. Not a substitute for a lawn you want to walk on.

Questions people ask