Five ways to jazz up your patch

1 Mow some crazy patterns

If you’re one of those gardeners who likes mowing the lawn, why not experiment and make shapes in the lawn using the lawnmower? All you have to do is mow the lawn as usual, then drop the blades slightly lower and mow a pattern into the lawn. Keep going upstairs to look down on the lawn and view your progress.

2 Add a feature

If a lawn has nothing as a centrepiece, or no focal point at the end of it, then it ends up being flat and formless. Place a sundial, bird bath or even a tree in the centre of the lawn to give it a finishing touch. Choose something in proportion to the size of the lawn.

3 Make it a better shape

Lawns look so much more attractive if they’re cut into a deliberate shape. Look at the current shape of your lawn and think about ways to make it more interesting. If the lawn’s next to some borders and is square, try shaping it into a circle instead. That way you’ll have curved edges to the lawn and some new curvy border gaps to plant up. Just lay a hosepipe over the lawn to work out the shape you want, and use it as a cutting guide. 4 Leave it unmown

This is a very easy way to encourage more wildlife into the garden. You can simply leave a part of the lawn unmown, to grow to its full height and just mow some paths in it. Or to guarantee more desirable wildflowers in the lawn, lay some wildflower turf in place of areas of lawn. This looks like ordinary turf but has small wildflower plants in it. Visit www.wildflowerturf.co.uk, or call 01256 771222 for more information. 5 Plant some beds in it

Adding new planting areas to a lawn is a great way to reduce the time spent mowing in summer. It can also conceal other parts of the garden beyond the lawn, and make the garden seem bigger. Try adding a woodland area with a small tree, such as Cercis canadensis ‘Forest Pansy’, or a small magnolia such as M. stellata, for the centre of a bed, then plant underneath it with a succession of early-flowering woodland plants, from snowdrops and aconites in winter, to daffodils and erythroniums in spring.