Lawns and winter.

[Yorkshire Coop]

We are just about to start heading into winter here the U.K. So I'm wondering if I'm best leaving some length on my grass over winter or do I try and get as many cuts in as possible to keep it short. I have an obsession with keeping the grass short and tidy during the summer but in winter it looks pretty ratty which drives me potty! Right now we have had some high temps for here so the grass is still growing at this point in time.
Any advice on what would be best for the grass during the winter will be very much appreciated, thank you.

 

[SueT]

It can harm the lawn to cut it too short, I've heard 3" should be minimum. It will look tidy if all grass is the same length.

 

[lazy gardener]

Agreed. The grass actually needs some length to it to keep the lawn healthy. I don't know what your winters are like, but here, the grass is covered by up to 3' of snow all winter, so I pretty much don't care what it looks like in the winter. In the spring, when things start to thaw out, it's usually brown and downright ugly. But, it doesn't take it long to green up. Sometimes it's too wet to mow, so it gets pretty long by the first cut. All good. I really don't care what it looks like. Weeds and all... if it's green, and if the lawnmower can cut it down, and hubby keeps his mower out of my gardens, I'm happy.

 

[Yorkshire Coop]

Thank you both so much I will try to resist the urge to cut it too short with the final cut but at the rate it's growing right now I may still be cutting at Christmas

We get a real mixed bag of weather over here in England. A bit of everything really. Last winter was relatively mild and we had no snow but other winters we have had a couple of feet of the stuff so it's a guess as to what will be thrown at us this year.