If you stick to a good lawn-care routine throughout the whole year, you should be able to keep your lawn in great condition. This means regular mowing, using an electric or petrol strimmer to take care of the edges of your lawn, fertilising, watering etc.

Of course, sometimes things go wrong - you’re busy, don’t have time to care for the lawn, and the state of the grass suffers. You’ll then need to set about the task of reconditioning the lawn.

So firstly ask yourself of what kind the damage actually is. Most simple damage (even to the point where some of the grass has died) can be repaired given enough time.

It is possible that the damage to the lawn is too severe to save it. At this point, it’s advisable to simply regrow the grass. You’ll need to dig up the remainder of the old grass and rotate the soil. Then scatter new seeds (your local garden center can help you choose). Then just cover them with soil.

It goes without saying that, when you’re trying to get the grass to grow back, you need to follow an intensive lawn care routine. Use the fertiliser recommended by the garden center and keep the grass well watered.

If the grass isn’t beyond the stage of saving, the next most typical type of damage is that you’ve simply let it grow too tall and wild. After this, weeds and fungus are able to easily spread.

People’s initial reaction to this, when they finally come to mow the lawn, is to simply cut it back to its normal height. However, this can be a mistake. What will happen is that the sudden mowing of the weakened grass to a short length will end up damaging it further.

There’s only one safe way to deal with the lawn in this kind of circumstance. That’s to grab a strimmer and cut just a bit off the top. Keep going back to it every few days until it’s back to a good height.

If you’ve neglected to fertilise the lawn, or the soil isn’t of great quality, the grass may start to lose its colour. If it starts to go yellow, you’ll know that the soil has a lack of nitrogen (essential for grass) in it.

You should pop down to your garden center and buy a step-system fertiliser. Not only are these really simple to use, they’re incredibly helpful for getting the grass just the right nutrients.

At this point, I think it’s important to note that you should always pull up and weeds as soon as you see them. By killing them at the root, you prevent them from spreading further; and I’m sure you know how quickly weeds can spread.

After you’ve mowed the grass back to a good height and started to fertilise the lawn again, you should inspect it for any dead or brown patches. The way to deal with these is to dig up the area (only slightly) and rotate the soil. Then spread grass seed and cover with a thin layer of soil.

It’s really important to then keep the patch well watered whilst the seeds grow into grass. If you don’t do this, especially if it’s summer, the grass will have a much harder time taking root.

If you go through all of this work to get your lawn into great condition, make sure you don’t have to do it again! Use your lawnmower and use your grass trimmer often to always keep the grass in fantastic shape.