A knee-high overgrown lawn in Sandwich, totally cut back.

What knee-high actually looks like

Photos flatten how long the grass really is, but if you look at where the bicycle sits in the picture, you can see it half-disappears into the lawn. That's the giveaway. By the time the grass is brushing your knees, it's well past anything a normal mower can take in a single pass without scalping the ground underneath. The previous owner had let it go for what looked like the best part of a season.

The plan

For a lawn this length we work in two stages on the same visit. First pass: a high cut on the petrol mower with the box off, knocking the bulk of the height down without trying to bag the cuttings (it would clog inside thirty seconds). That gives us a thick layer of clippings sat on the lawn, which we then rake off into piles before they smother the grass underneath. Second pass with the box on and the blade dropped a notch, picking up what's left and tidying the edges. The lawn isn't bowling-green height by the end, but it's short enough to look like a lawn again.

Why two passes beats one

The instinct on a job like this is to drop the blade right down and take the lot in one go. It's the worst thing you can do. Cutting more than a third of the height in one pass starves the roots, opens the lawn up to weeds, and leaves bald patches that take a fortnight to recover. Two careful passes leaves the grass green and growing rather than yellow and stunned. Slower, but it's the difference between a lawn that bounces back next week and one that needs reseeding.

What happens next

The customer is now on a regular cycle. Next visit drops the height a little more; the one after takes it to the proper finish. From there it's straightforward upkeep, fortnightly through the season, with the lawn sitting at a sensible length the whole time. The hard part of an overgrown lawn is the first cut. After that, keeping it nice is far cheaper and easier than letting it go again.

If your lawn is at the same stage

If your lawn has run away from you, whether you've been away, just moved in, or had a season where life got busy, drop us a message. We cover Sandwich, Deal, Eastry, Worth, Ash, Woodnesborough, and the surrounding East Kent villages. Our Overgrown Lawn Rescue visit handles exactly this kind of state, and once the lawn is back under control we can put you on the regular round.