Patriotic lawn that’s a cut above
DEVOTED gardener Keith Smith has painstakingly nurtured Britain’s most patriotic lawn.
Mr Smith, 40, has laboured for three years to get the lawn in peak condition, feeding it with fertiliser and in summer mowing it for two hours every day to a height of a quarter of an inch – exactly.
And proud Keith has even told his wife and two daughters “keep off the grass” in order to preserve the Union Flag he has fashioned into the front lawn outside their Birmingham semi.
Mr Smith, a green keeper at Edgbaston Golf Club, said: “People admire it and I see them stroking it just to check it’s real grass. Not many people are allowed to come that close to it, though. My kids aren’t allowed on it, and if they do I shout at them ‘get off my lawn’.”
His daughters, 14 and 10, do, however, have the run of the back garden.
The patriotic design was inspired by The Great Get Together, a celebration to honour the memory of murdered MP Jo Cox and was decorated with bunting for the first anniversary of her death in June. Now Mr Smith has come in the top six of the Allett International Creative Lawn Stripes Competition and hopes to take top spot next year.
But disaster almost struck earlier this year after back surgery forced him to allow wife Kirsten, 40, to do the mowing. Keith said he kept a watchful eye. He said: “It was almost as painful as the surgery watching her do it, but she would have murdered me if I went near the mowers.
“She did a good job in the end.”