Top-dressing a lawn is a fancy term for amending the soil without disturbing the sod. Golfers might be familiar with the practice because this technique was first performed on golf courses in Scotland ...

As a young boy, I had to contend with my grandfather’s compost heap. It was a veritable Vesuvius of foul-smelling, putrescible plant waste, a metre high and hidden behind a privet hedge. We had placed ...