Every spring, as soon as we get the first decent dry day, half the country heads out to the lawn with the mower. That impulse is understandable. After a long wet winter the grass is often long, a bit ragged and in need of attention. But the timing and the approach of that first cut matter considerably more than most people realise, and getting them wrong can set the lawn up for problems that persist all season. The good news is that the right approach is not complicated. It just requires a little patience and a willingness to resist the urge to cut too soon and too low.

The first question is always when. The honest answer is that the calendar is a less reliable guide than the condition of the ground itself. In a mild Irish spring, grass can be growing in February. In a cold, wet one, you might be waiting until April before conditions are right. What you are looking for before you make that first cut is ground that is firm enough to take the weight of a mower without compacting or leaving ruts, and grass that is dry enough to cut cleanly. Cutting wet grass causes the blades to tear rather than cut, which stresses the grass, clogs the mower and leaves the lawn looking ragged. Cutting frozen grass causes direct physical damage to the leaf blades and the crowns. Neither is worth doing. If you step onto the lawn and your foot sinks noticeably into the surface, leave it for another week. A dry, bright day with overnight temperatures above freezing is what you are waiting for, and in most parts of Ireland that day will come reliably between mid-March and early April.

Cutting too low on the first cut is the most common mistake Irish gardeners make with their lawns, and it creates a chain of problems that can run through the entire season. When you cut grass very short after a long period of growth, you remove a significant proportion of the leaf blade in one go. The grass responds to this stress by putting energy into recovering rather than into strengthening its root system. Weakened grass in thin soil is exactly the condition that moss finds inviting, and in Ireland's climate moss will always be ready to take advantage. The rule to hold in your head is the one-third rule: never remove more than one third of the grass height in a single cut. On the first cut of the year, err on the side of removing even less. The lawn will look tidier for it and the grass will be in considerably better shape going into spring.

After the first cut, if you find the lawn is carrying a significant amount of moss or thatch, this is the right time of year to deal with it. Scarifying, which means vigorously raking out the dead material from the surface either by hand with a spring-tine rake or with a powered scarifier you can hire, opens up the soil surface and allows air, water and nutrients to reach the grass roots. The lawn will look considerably worse for a week or two after scarifying. That is entirely normal. What you have done is given the grass the conditions it needs to thicken up properly through spring. For more detail on dealing with moss specifically, including why sulphate of iron is counterproductive in the long term, see the advice on moss on Irish lawns.

The question of what to do with the grass clippings is worth addressing from an ecological standpoint. Collecting the clippings on the first few cuts of the year makes sense, because the grass is often long and damp and the volume of clippings would smother the lawn if left. But as the season progresses and you are cutting regularly at a reasonable height, leaving the clippings on the lawn is genuinely beneficial. Fine clippings break down quickly and return organic matter and nutrients directly to the soil surface. This is one of the simplest things you can do to improve the soil structure of your lawn over time, reducing the need for additional feeding and improving the lawn's resilience to dry spells. A lawn whose soil is regularly fed in this way will thicken up naturally and become progressively less hospitable to moss and weeds.

Once you are cutting regularly through April and into May, you can begin to bring the cutting height down gradually towards its summer level, which for most Irish lawns is somewhere between three and four centimetres. Do this progressively over several cuts rather than in one go. Grass that is kept at a reasonable height through the season is healthier, more drought-resistant, more weed-resistant and significantly better looking than grass that is scalped repeatedly in an attempt to reduce the frequency of cutting. The time saved by cutting infrequently and short is always spent dealing with the consequences.

On the question of feeding, the first cut of the year is a good marker for when to start thinking about what the soil beneath the lawn actually needs. A lawn that is growing well and thickening up through spring on its own probably just needs the clippings returned and perhaps a light application of a balanced organic feed as the season gets going. A lawn that is struggling to thicken, showing pale growth or running to moss will benefit from a more considered approach. For advice on feeding a lawn that is newly established or has been underperforming, see the guidance on new lawn feeding in Ireland. If you are considering starting from scratch with either seed or turf, the guidance on how to lay a new lawn in Ireland covers the options and the timing.