You can make professional appearing lawn stripes in your front yard using just the mower currently in your garage or shed.
Some homeowners have the "look' to their lawn because they have it professionally manicured by companies with equipment well into the thousands of dollars. Guess what? All that fancy equipment is not necessary to produce the end result.
The first step to developing the "striped" effect to your lawn is to understand what causes it. It is simply caused by the back deck of your mower. While in motion, the back wall of your mower brushes the freshly mowed blades of grass forward. After mowing a strip of turf, park your mower and look closely at the completed area. If you turn around and look at it in the opposite direction of which you mowed it, it will be a darker shade of green. If you walk all the way back to where you started the strip and look at it in the same direction as you mowed, it will be a lighter green.
If you like the visual effect of stripes on your turf, do not mow in circles. This is an American custom that has been handed down for as long as the machines to cut grass have existed. If you want stripes you have to mow in stripes.
The next step is to determine the direction that make the stripes most appealing. If you have a lawn in an open neighborhood, stripes parallel to the street are most appealing because they have a more noticeable effect for passing traffic in both direction. Parallel stripes to the street, however, look less appealing directly in front of the house.
If your turf is confined by structures or landscaping on the sides, then stripes should be perpendicular to the street. By doing this, when the turf area comes into view, its attractiveness will pull the viewer's eye toward the house.
The final option of direction is diagonal. Use this if you want both passers-by and those stopping directly in front to catch the beauty. If you use this method, assess with direction traffic travels most frequently, in order to know the best direction to mow. For example, if your house faces west on a north and south street and traffic approaches from the south more frequently, then mow the stripes from northeast to southwest. This will make the appearance of the stripes visible to northbound motorists and to those who stop in front.
Once direction is determined, you must next determine the size of your mower in relation to the size of your lawn. If you have a really large lawn and a 21 inch push mower, going back and forth will not give a vivid look to the turf. Instead, you must skip a row when you do the switch back. The skipped row is then mowed once you turn around. This makes the rows look like they are 36 to 40 inches wide instead of 21. You can use the same technique with a riding mower that does not have a zero turning radius. If your lawn is small, single swaths will give the desired effect.
If the lines are not as distinctive as you would like, you can intensify them by mowing over them in same direction a second or third time. This will broaden the contrast between the dark green and light green rows.
Although some professional lawn companies follow the same pattern for the entire mowing season, it is healthier for your turf to change directions at least once in the mowing season. For example, if you mow parallel to the street for the first half of the summer, you need to mow perpendicular to the street the second half of the summer. The new direction will create a checkerboard effect for a few weeks, but will eventually give the full appearance of the stripes in the new direction that you are mowing.
