For our summer holiday at the end of August 2013, my wife and I made a visit to the lovely gardens at RHS Rosemoor near Great Torrington in Devon.
I was delighted to see that the gardeners at this lovely garden really take pride in the lawns and those in the formal gardens were some of the finest I’ve seen.
The fantastic straight edges are achieved with a metal edging, which is fantastically durable, easy to mow over, easy to clean and creates a beautiful sharp, straight edge. I bet it was difficult and expensive to install though!
The most exciting thing I found was the fact that two of the lawns lower down in the formal garden had already undergone their autumn regeneration. As you can see from the following pictures, these lawns had been mown short, then lightly scarified, then hollow-tine aerated (with the cores correctly removed) and then top dressed with a fine sandy loam.
Further on around the garden I was pleased to see that the great looking lawns continue. Even here in this exotic garden is a lovely neat lawn. This one is less manicured than in the formal garden, but it is mown reasonably long and so the sharp green really finishes off the exotic plants and flowers.
Further around the old gardens, Lady Anne Berry (the original creator of the garden) had a traditional croquet lawn, and the RHS keeps this area immaculate, which is great to see.
Finally, our last walk took us down to the teaching area of the gardens, which had been recently re-laid with turf, and had taken really well and made an excellent photo opportunity.
If you find yourself down in Devon and have a day free and would like to have a look at some wonderful lawns, I thoroughly recommend a visit!
Kris Lord
Further reading on RHS Rosemoor
2018 Update
I revisited RHS Rosemoor in 2018 for the evening and was pleased to see that the lawns were still looking great. Here are a couple of photos of my most recent visit.
Winter 2019 Update.
I re-visited again in the winter. See my photos of this visit here:
