Like every living thing, grass needs air and water to grow and thrive. Simple lawn maintenance can make all the difference.

During the summer months in particular, lawns suffer from continual use - be that children, sports, or alfresco partying - these all combine to cause surface compaction. Lawn maintenance is crucial to prevent damage. Areas of the lawn that get heavy traffic, such as paths and play areas, will often become very compacted.

Compaction impedes drainage and makes it harder for air, water and fertiliser to penetrate to where they are needed at the grass roots. To help improve the drainage and avoid problems with weeds and moss, it's a good idea to aerate the lawn.

To do this, push a garden fork into the ground to about 6in ( 15cm) deep and move it backwards and forwards to create air channels into the soil. Then push the fork in again about 4in ( 10cm) away and repeat the process until the whole area is done. Aerating the lawn during the Spring and Autumn, helps with drainage and allows the soil temperature to rise more quickly and the surface to literally 'breathe'.

On heavy soils, you could use a hollow-tine tool. This removes plugs of soil. They can be bought from garden centres. Alternatively you could hire one.

Once you've aerated the soil, it is a good time to apply a top dressing. A simple mixture of three parts of loam, six parts of sharp sand and one part of peat substitute will suit most soils. Apply at about 2kg per sq m (4lb per sq yd) and brush it into the lawn surface.

Feeding and Weeding

Feeding the grass with a lawn fertiliser will make it greener and grow more thickly. This helps it to resist invasions of weeds and moss. It is possible to tackle weeds and moss while feeding by using a combined feed and weed product or a moss treatment. Late spring is the best time for feeding. If your lawn receives heavy wear it is advisable to feed every six weeks until mid-summer.

Tidying lawn edges keeps the grass looking neat and stops it spreading into borders. Re-cut the edges each spring using a half-moon edging tool. For a straight edge, cut against a plank of wood and for a curve trim along a rope laid on the ground. Pull away the excess soil to leave a vertical edge measuring 5cm to 7.5cm (2in to 3in) deep. After mowing, trim the grass overhanging the edges with long-handled edging shears or a rotary trimmer.

Edge Repair

The following technique will completely restore deteriorating edges. (move your cursor over the pictures)

Moss occurs if the lawn is shady, badly compacted, damp or too short. Spiking compacted or damp areas with a garden fork will help prevent these problems in future. Then treat the moss with a chemical moss killer. Once the moss has died, it can be raked out with a spring-tined rake. For larger lawns, an electric scarifier saves time.

If your lawn has patches of moss tackle this first.

To get rid of the moss, use a moss-killer. Don't panic when the lawn appears to go black as this is the moss dying. Two weeks later you can scarify the lawn to remove it.

The best way to prevent moss from returning is to tackle the underlying cause. Moss is often a sign of poor growing conditions, such as bad drainage, excessive shade, compaction, low fertility and over-acidity.

To tackle poor drainage and compaction, aerate the lawn and apply a top dressing of sand. In seriously wet areas, consider reworking the soil to include trenches filled with sand to improve the drainage

To improve fertility, feed the lawn.

To remove shade, prune back overhanging trees and shrubs.

To reduce acidity, apply lime - in the form of ground chalk or ground limestone - at no more than 1.5oz per sq yd (50g per sq m).

During long dry spells, mow less frequently and leave grass to grow longer, as a rule of thumb grass roots grow down to roughly the same depth as the height of the leaves at the surface.

Keep in mind that your grass may turn brown, but it will grow and green up again when the rain comes. In the meantime do not feed the grass as this can scorch it and do not water either, unless as part of an ongoing watering programme, as this encourages grass roots to grow closer to the surface, making it vulnerable to drought.

Small weed patches can be pulled up by hand or spot-treated with weed-killer. Larger areas can be treated with a selective lawn weed-killer.

If part of the lawn is regularly used as a path, it is worth laying a proper pathway for protection. Stepping stones are an attractive choice. Lay them with their surface just below the level of the lawn so that the mower's blades can pass safely over them.

Worm casts on the lawn smother fine leafed grasses and produce ideal conditions in which weed seeds can grow. Dormant weed seeds buried deep in the soil can be brought to the surface in these tiny mounds of soil, which need sorting as soon as they are detected. When worm casts appear they can either be collected or scattered using a brush before mowing.

Unfortunately many gardening experts recommend removing all lawn clippings and using a chemical worm killer to eradicate the cause of worm casts. Worms are one of the greatest allies a gardener has, they naturally create tunnels and passages through the soil that allow the soil to breathe and become freely draining, they pull organic matter into the soil improving its structure and fertility, and as a bonus the dreaded worm casts produce a wonderful fertile growing medium in which to raise seeds or use for potting purposes.

You'll often see the term 'scarifying' used in books. It basically means vigorously raking the lawn.

The reason we do it, is to remove the accumulation of thatch, old grass clippings, moss and other dead and decaying organic matter that builds up in the turf. Getting rid of this will allow water and fertilisers to reach the grass roots more easily and in turn will improve grass growth.

For small areas, use a spring-tine rake. It's a great way to get some exercise! On larger areas, you may prefer to use an electric rake. These can be bought from most garden centres and DIY stores. Alternatively you could hire one.

As the leaves begin to fall, ensure that you rake them up regularly. For larger areas it is well worth investing in a leaf vacuum to speed up the job.

Scarifying or raking in your lawn maintenance programme should be done in Spring and has several benefits - preventing the build up of thatch and getting rid of surface debris.

A second rake in Autumn is essential to remove all the fallen leaves, ageing grass plants and debris. The lawn is then ready for re-seeding.

Top dressing is the application of a mixture made up of organic material, loam and sand that literally fills in all the minor hollows that naturally develop on lawns.

Top dressing is best applied in early autumn and results in denser grass growth, a flatter surface and improved drainage.

It sounds obvious, but lawns really do need watering, particularly during the dry summer months. Prolonged dry spells will slow up grass growth if the lawn maintenance programme does not include proper watering. Deeper-rooted weeds will survive and outgrow grass struggling in drought conditions.

(The new SO-GREEN lawn seed will remain green even during drought - a valuable asset when all around is fading! However, it will still need watering to keep the grass healthy. Try the 'footprint test'. If the grass fails to spring back after standing on it, you should water it.)