Preparing Your Lawn and Flowerbeds for Winter

As summer becomes a distant memory and winter approaches with speed, it’s time to start preparing your lawn for winter, as well as any flowerbeds or vegetable patches you may have.

At AWBS, we have everything you need to get your outside areas ready for the colder weather – from mulches, topsoil and compost, to lawn seed, turf and fertiliser.

Simple lawn care for strengthening your turf

October/November is the perfect time to start preparing your lawn for winter. At this time of year, you can encourage a good root system to develop ready for the spring. Start by clearing any fallen leaves and give it one last cut, if you need to. Spiking the grass with a fork can help to increase drainage and allow air to get to the roots, before you add lawn feed to help strengthen the roots and prepare your lawn for the cold winter months. Rolawn Top Dressing is ideal for improving any lawn and enhancing its appearance, as it will stimulate new grass growth, create a level surface and also improve drainage.

Rather than just fertilising your lawn, use Rolawn GroRight Lawn Fertiliser, Weed and Moss killer to get rid of unwanted growth too, and keep your lawn free of moss and weeds.

Quality topsoil and grass seed will encourage growth

If you have any bare patches of lawn, now is the best time to treat them. Use good quality topsoil, like AWBS Premium Topsoil, which has a high organic content and is perfect for topdressing, seeding and lawn renovation. Apply a premium grass seed, such as Rolawn Medallion Lawn Seed, offering a blend of the most advanced cultivators available, for creating a healthy, green and hardwearing lawn.

If you have areas that are beyond basic lawn care, this is the perfect time to lay new turf, as it will have plenty of time to establish before next summer. Rolawn Medallion Turf is a multi-purpose, high-quality turf that’s specially cultivated to produce an outstanding lawn. And, it’s currently on offer for a limited time only!

When laying medallion turf or sowing grass seed, Rolawn GroRight Lawn Establishment fertiliser will ensure your lawn gets off to the best possible start. As a unique granular slow-release pre-turfing and seeding fertiliser, it feeds turf and seeds from the roots up.

Use mulches to protect flowerbeds and vegetable patches

Mulches help to improve the soil around plants, prevent weeds from growing and protect the roots of plants in the winter. Mulches can be placed on the surface of cultivated soil, applied to bare soil or used to cover the surface of compost in containers. The best time to apply mulch is late autumn, when the soil is still moist and warm. Our Value Cover mulch is recycled bark mulch, offering an economical alternative to traditional bark mulch, which helps to suppress weed growth and protect borders and flowerbeds from extreme weather conditions.

If you want to apply a fertiliser to your soil, there’s no need to remove mulches to do this – you can spread the fertiliser over the mulches, which will be washed down to the plant roots by rain.

Taking care of your flowerbeds now will help them to really thrive in the spring.

Clean up your borders

Dig up any annuals and plant some winter bedding plants, ready for a wonderful display of colour in the spring. Autumn is also a great time to move any poorly placed plants and divide any areas of overcrowding, while the soil is still warm.

Once your borders are tidy, spread a thick layer of compost across them. This will slowly break down, releasing nutrients to the plants and improving the soil structure. Melcort Multi-Purpose compost is ideal, with 70% organic compost, 20% bark fines and 10% coarse sand, it offers soil improvement to help with fast rooting and growth establishment.

Visit AWBS in Swindon, Oxford or Yarnton for all the building and landscaping supplies you need. We offer fast free local delivery, offer our price pledge and our expert staff will be happy to advise you and answer any questions you have about getting your garden ready for winter.