Ben Sims: For the Love of Grass

A greenkeeper by trade, Ben Sims has built a huge social media following sharing his lawn tips with fellow lawn enthusiasts right from his home in Orange. We caught up with Ben to get the lowdown on lawn care this Spring.

When Ben Sims started his Lawn Tips channel on YouTube in 2017, he had no idea how big it would become, topping more than 17 million video views along with an audience of thousands on Facebook and Instagram.

“I started a YouTube because my wife, Emma, used to get sick of me talking about grass all the time! I’m a qualified greenkeeper and I worked on the golf course for about eight years, doing my apprenticeship and then working with my twin brother, Josh, as superintendents at the Ex-Services Country Club in Orange.

“I loved that job but I needed an outlet as I enjoy being a bit creative with video editing, so LawnTips grew from that.”

While he didn’t set out to create a business, Ben’s online popularity grew to the point that he went full-time 12 months ago.

“I started with educational content, so teaching people how to fertilise, when to fertilise, how to prevent weeds, what products work. Basically I was showing my journey in my home garden.

“From there, people just got on board. It’s funny how many people love grass. I guess a lot of new homeowners tend to jump on board, or people with kids who want a nice environment for their family to play in. I wasn’t expecting it to grow so much. It’s quite a niche topic, really, but it just sort of went nuts.

“I sell lawn plans and turf supplies on my website but a lot of what I do is sharing my journey. I try to get people to post photos of their lawn and create a bit of a community on Facebook, while on Instagram I more share videos and photos.”

For Ben, at the heart of every passionate lawn enthusiast is pride.
“I think people enjoy having their friends over and showing off. To me, a lawn enthusiast is someone that takes pride in their yard. Someone that wakes up in the morning, looks outside and sees how much the grass has grown. Someone that’s passionate about working on their lawn and getting results. It’s a pride thing.

“For me, being a greenkeeper came first. I always loved the outdoors, so I just took on the apprenticeship, but for the first few years, I still used a whipper snipper to mow my whole yard, so I wasn’t super keen at the start. 

“It wasn’t until we actually bought a house and I decided I wanted to plant some grass of my own that lawn care really started to become a huge passion of mine.”

Ben’s top Spring-time tips for lawn care

1. Mow regularly: My main tip is to mow your lawn regularly. One of the biggest faults I see in home lawns is people mow once and then leave it for two or three weeks. But you need to mow your lawn one to two times a week. This will make a significant difference to the overall look and how healthy your lawn is because the more frequently you mow, the less you stress the plant. Regular mowing also promotes root growth and lateral growth, so it thickens up naturally.

2. Water infrequently: My advice is to get on a proper watering schedule. Don’t water for five minutes every day. You’ve got to water your lawn one to two times a week for 30 to 40 minutes. Things like water pressure and availability, and sprinkler systems, all play a part, but what you’re looking for is deep, infrequent watering to help promote regrowth on your lawn and to get it nice and healthy for summer.

3. Renovate your lawn: That doesn’t mean you rip your whole lawn out. It means you cut your lawn back nice and low to get some oxygen down into the root system, then you need to aerate (pulling the plug out of the ground to help get oxygen get back down to your roots and to help with drainage). Next comes top dressing with either sand or a sandy loam to help level out uneven areas and fill those core holes back in, before you hit it with a granular, slow-release fertiliser to bring your lawn back to health.

4. Spray for weeds: The first week in September is a great time to spray the weeds out of your lawn. Something a lot of people don’t know about us preemergence herbicide, which you can put down to prevent weeds coming up throughout the spring and summer and saves you time and money as well.

Ben says people on larger lifestyle blocks and farms are best to choose one area of lawn to focus on. 

“If you’re looking after a huge area, you can’t be mowing it all the time and you can’t be watering and fertilising every single area. So, if you’re on a few acres out of town like we are, the main thing is to focus on mowing when you can, having a warm season grass like Kikuyu or Couch because they don’t need too much water, and fertilising the area you want to improve for summertime.”

Hutcheon & Pearce recently gave Ben the Z530M zero turn mower, X380 ride-on mower, and the Gator™ XUV to put through their paces on his property. Watch how that went on the Lawn Tips YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/channel/UC47hWf2NTrfOvB-e5kpp04g