The Ultimate Grass Seed Guide 2024

The Ultimate Grass Seed Guide 2024 featured image

We wanted to begin the growing season with our Ultimate Grass Seed Guide, which gives you more technical information on our grass seeds, their ideal growing conditions, and where to use them.

Our Grass Seed Guide breakdown

Our grass seed guide presents the grass seeds in our mixes and explains where they grow best! At The Grass People, we live by our slogan – Quality is Simple. Our grass seed is rigorously tested to make sure it offers the highest purity and germination rate to ensure your garden is as green and healthy as possible – it’s as simple as that!

All our grass seed meets the Higher Voluntary Standard (HVS), the highest standard the UK government sets for grass seed quality and purity in the UK (and in the EU).

The grass seed types we use in our mixtures guide:

Perennial Ryegrass (Lolium Perenne)

Perennial ryegrass is a durable, hardwearing grass type which will establish and grow quickly. The seed is undeterred by harsh weather conditions during germination and once the grass has been fully established, which is beneficial in our changeable climate!

Key Facts

Strong Creeping Red Fescue (Festuca Rubra Rubra)

Strong creeping red fescue is a highly tolerant grass seed species that can thrive under many conditions. Most notably, it establishes quickly and is tolerant to lawn disease. It will also grow well in dry and poor soil, so it’s ideal for any garden.

Key Facts

Chewings Fescue (Festuca Rubra Commutata)

Chewings Fescue is a slow-growing grass seed with fine leaves and a high density. This enables the variety to produce a dense but fine sward ideal for giving your lawn a much fuller look. It is also known to germinate at lower temperatures than other varieties within the fescue family.

Key Facts

Slender Creeping Red Fescue (Festuca Rubra Litoralis)

Slender Creeping Red Fescue is similar to Chewings Fescue, producing a fine-leafed grass sward. However, a unique feature of slender fescues is that they grow in stolons, which ultimately means they creep and spread through the garden. This allows the lawn to heal and mend itself when damaged, which is ideal for even the less attentive gardener. It is also very tolerant of close and frequent mowing.

Key Facts

Smooth Stalked Meadow Grass (Poa Pratensis)

Smooth stalked meadow grass is a shade-tolerant, hardwearing grass seed that resists cold stress. At first, it is slow to develop, only forming small tufts. Then, in the following years, it will expand to have a maximum ground cover, but users should know that this seed variety requires some patience. When established, the leaves will have a subtle blue tint which has led to it being called Kentucky Blue Grass, don’t worry, it’s very subtle.

Key Facts

Hard Fescue (Festuca Longifolia)

Hard fescue is a fine-leaved grass seed known as the fescue family’s most durable. It is perfect for inclusion in seed mixtures in which the grass will be subject to low sunlight, low nutrients and possible droughts.

Key Facts

Small Leaved Clover

While this is not a grass seed, it is a new addition to our sustainable lawn seed mix and is a superb addition to your garden lawn. It offers a climate-smart solution for your garden since it naturally helps balance nitrogen levels in your soil. In addition, our clover features a stolon root system that creates a root network below the soil’s surface to spread across your garden. As a bonus, clover satisfies the needs of many bugs, bees, pollinators, and birds.

Key Facts:

  • Sowing rate for new lawn: 50 grams per m2
  • Recommended Mowing Height 20 - 40mm
  • Present in ECO: Clover Lawn.

Our lawn seed mixes from our grass seed guide:

The Grass People Grass Seed Guide

SUPERSTAR: Back Lawn

SUPERSTAR: Back Lawn helps everyone to achieve their best back lawn! This seed mix is ideal for gardens that get a lot of use - the 80% perennial ryegrass content creates a hardwearing, fast-growing lawn that can handle any wear and tear, while the strong creeping red fescue helps it recover quickly.

FAMILY: Kids and Pets

With kids and pets running around, it can be hard to imagine being able to maintain the perfect lawn. Thankfully, our FAMILY: Kids and Pets mix was built for just that and will help you get that family and pet-friendly lawn you’ve been dreaming of!

STATEMENT: Front Lawn

STATEMENT: Front Lawn is a 100% fescue mix (chewings, slender creeping red and strong creeping red fescue) that will give you the ultimate ornamental lawn. With such a beautiful lawn comes great responsibility, and you’ll need to stay on top of your lawn care to keep this lawn looking great. We recommend keeping traffic to a minimum and regular maintenance as a priority; your STATEMENT lawn will be the most incredible garden you’ve ever had!

ECO: Clover Lawn

ECO: Clover Lawn uses a combination of hardwearing grass seeds and the clover’s stolon root system in this mix to create a drought-resistant lawn that stays green all year round. This lawn mix even stays green in the coldness of winter and during summer drought! The clover also acts as a natural fertiliser, meaning it is self-feeding and requires little additional aftercare. And when the clover blooms, it attracts bees and pollinators and creates a habitat for local wildlife.

IMPRESS: Clay Master

You can grow a magnificent lawn in clay soil if you use the correct grass seed! Our IMPRESS: Clay Master has been a reliable option since we introduced it in 2019. Designed with you in mind, we went out of our way to ensure it contains the best grass seed species to tolerate the difficult conditions that clay soils often present. Do you have a wet and boggy garden in the winter and a dry and cracked garden in the summer? Well, it sounds like you need our IMPRESS: Clay Master grass seed!

THRIVE: Sandy Soils

Sandy soils are notorious for being dry and not holding nutrients, making it very difficult for grass seeds to grow. So, to ensure your lawn thrives in sandy soils, we created our THRIVE: Sand Soils seed mix, which grows brilliantly where most other grass seeds struggle!

STEADFAST: Shade

Almost all lawns have areas where nothing seems to grow – usually beside a garden fence, beneath a tree or near garden furniture – and this is often due to shade. Our STEADFAST: Shade grass seed mix features an expert blend of shade-tolerant grass seeds, including creeping fescues, perennial ryegrass and meadow grass. This seed mix is perfect for growing in dappled light, non-permanent shade, which can also be mixed with our other seed types to achieve the perfect lawn.

STEADFAST: Ultra Shade

Our STEADFAST: Ultra Shade is a specialist seed mix that contains the super species Poa Supina, which can grow in little to no light. This grass seed is perfect for heavily shaded areas of your garden where nothing seems ever to grow – this could be beneath large trees or alongside high fences, walls or hedgerows.

RESTORE: Self-Repair Lawn

RESTORE: Self-Repair is ideal if you’re tired of reseeding your lawn every season or don’t have enough spare time for detailed lawn maintenance. Our RESTORE: Self-Repair lawn contains the revolutionary ryegrass Zurich, which repairs on its own once established, so you can focus your attention and use your free time on other things.

You can find links below for further reading on how to get the beautiful garden lawn you've always wanted:

If you have any questions on anything included in our grass seed guide or are having trouble growing grass in your garden, please message us, and we will happily help!