If there's one job that gets overlooked more than any other, it's lawn care in autumn. Everyone remembers to mow through summer, but the work that actually makes the biggest difference to how a lawn looks next year happens now, while the grass still has enough growing season left to recover.

Scarifying is the big one, and it sounds more brutal than it is. It's essentially a thorough raking out of the thatch – the dead grass, moss and general debris that builds up at the base of the lawn over the year and stops air, water and nutrients getting down to the roots. A lawn can look perfectly green on top and still be strangled underneath by thatch. Scarifying clears that out, and yes, it can look a bit rough for a week or two afterwards – but that's exactly the sign it's working, and it's the single best thing you can do for a tired, mossy lawn.

Once a lawn's been scarified, it's often left with thin patches or bare ground where moss has been cleared, which is where top dressing and seeding come in – adding a layer of fresh soil and grass seed to fill the gaps and thicken things up before winter sets in. On lawns that are really past saving in places, or where you want an instant, even finish, turf laying is often the better option – particularly useful for gardens around Chertsey and Thorpe where the clay-heavy soil can make bare patches slow to recover from seed alone.

An autumn feed rounds the whole job off nicely. Unlike a spring or summer feed, which is all about pushing growth and green colour, an autumn feed is formulated to build stronger roots and improve resilience through the cold months ahead – it's feeding the lawn's foundations rather than its show. Get this right in October or November and you're genuinely setting the lawn up to come back thicker and healthier when the weather turns in spring.

None of these jobs are particularly glamorous, and a freshly scarified lawn is not going to win any prizes for looks in the short term. But gardens that get this attention every autumn consistently look better, greener and thicker through the following summer than the ones that don't – it's one of those jobs where the pay-off is a few months down the line rather than immediate, which is exactly why it gets skipped so often.

If your lawn's looking patchy, mossy or just a bit sorry for itself after a busy summer in the garden – whether that's a family lawn in Addlestone or a larger stretch of grass out towards Virginia Water – autumn is the moment to do something about it properly.

Let's have a chat about how we can prepare your garden over the autumn and winter so it's looking great next spring and into the summer.