Garden maintenance problems

Moss has spread across the lawn and the grass between it is thin, so the lawn feels soft and looks green in the wrong way.

Irregular brown or yellow patches have appeared in the lawn, and in places the turf lifts away like a loose mat.

Clover, buttercup, dandelions and flat rosettes have taken over so much of the lawn that there is more weed than grass.

The lawn squelches when you walk on it, footprints fill with water, and the surface feels soft and spongy all winter.

The hedge has grown too tall and too wide, gone bare and woody at the bottom, and you are not sure when it can be cut.

Box hedging or topiary has gone brown and lost its leaves in patches, and bare woody stems are showing through.

Twining white-flowered stems are winding through the shrubs and perennials, and pulling them out only seems to make more.

Ivy has climbed the house wall, the fence or the garage and is now into the gutters, under the roof edge and through the panels.

The garden has not been touched for years — waist-high growth, brambles through everything, and you cannot see the boundaries.

Toadstools have appeared in the lawn or around a stump, sometimes in rings or clumps, and nearby plants are dying back.