The green green grass of Eamonn Holmes - YOU Magazine Fashion Beauty Celebrity Health Life Relationships Horoscopes Food Interiors Travel Sign in Welcome!Log into your account Forgot your password? Password recovery Recover your password Search Sign in Welcome! Log into your account Forgot your password? Get help Password recovery Recover your password A password will be e-mailed to you. YOU Magazine Fashion Beauty Celebrity Health Life Relationships Horoscopes Food Interiors Travel Home Celebrity The green green grass of Eamonn Holmes By Anna Pursglove - August 21, 2022 Even ‘lawn-fluencer’ Eamonn Holmes is having problems keeping his turf verdant this summer and, he tells Anna Pursglove, summer’s hosepipe ban is only adding to his woes. Eamonn Holmes has had to concede defeat. The plan to build a doggy toilet in the garden for his collie cross Maggie has been thwarted by wife and fellow TV presenter Ruth Langsford. ‘She is having none of it,’ mutters 62-year-old Holmes. ‘She says it’s cruel and that the dog should be able to pee wherever she likes. So I have to put up with the burn marks on my lawn. The women in my life have conspired against me,’ he adds darkly. It’s no secret that Holmes is very proud of his lawn. In fact, he’s something of a ‘lawn-fluencer’, titillating his 757K Instagram followers with posts of the neat, emerald expanse at the couple’s Surrey home. The standout star of these clips (apart from Holmes and the grass) is Herbie the robot lawnmower. ‘Here Herbie, Herbie, Herbie,’ clucks Holmes in one video (viewed 256,567 times). ‘You OK, Herbie? Look…’ he turns to the camera. ‘Perfect circles. Like crop circles. He’s like one of the family.’ There are some who find the prospect of an ordered expanse of grass repressive. Holmes’s own wife refers to him as ‘the lawn police’, while gardening expert Monty Don thinks neat lawns are ‘a symbol of male control’. Holmes, however, insists that it is the tidy turf lovers themselves who are under attack. Up and down the country, middle-aged men are mounting rearguard actions to save their neatly clipped grass from an onslaught of rewilding. ‘Letting the grass grow wild is fine if you’ve got three acres and woodland,’ he says. ‘but in a suburban semi it just looks rough and unkempt.’ As far as Holmes is concerned, unruly grass is like unruly body hair ‘and I’m not one for a beard’. He does concede that Ruth, 62, has done a good job with the wildflower borders. ‘Fair play to her. They’re great when they’re in bloom. When they’re not, though, they’re a bloody mess.’ This sense of order goes right to the heart of what he loves about a well-laid and well-tended lawn. ‘I like symmetry,’ he says. ‘I like uniformity. My dad was a carpet fitter. The Leonardo da Vinci of carpet fitting. You’d never see a join. Never.’ In fact, the eagle-eyed will have spotted that Holmes is barefoot in at least one of the Herbie videos, just as though he is walking on carpet. ‘That’s how it should feel,’ he agrees. ‘I love to walk barefoot on my lawn, avoiding the dog poo, of course.’ What Holmes is most concerned about at the moment though (apart from Maggie and the local foxes relieving themselves on his turf) is the lack of rain. ‘Alan Titchmarsh did tell me not to worry,’ he says – looking worried. ‘He told me that even if the grass goes brown, it’ll come back as soon as it rains again. But you don’t want it to look scaldy do you?’ He’s considered artificial turf. In fact, he rather likes it but that’s another thing that Ruth is having none of. Apparently, she was ‘apoplectic’ when he suggested it. ‘It’s not good for the environment,’ he concedes. ‘All the same…’ What Holmes would really like to do is re-create the ground at his beloved Old Trafford. ‘When I go there, I always just sit and take a minute to appreciate it,’ he sighs with a faraway look in his eyes. ‘The camber that lets the water run away. The lights they bring out at night to make the grass grow. Amazing science.’ He shakes off the reverie. ‘Men in today’s society, though, we’re an irrelevance. Man sheds, man lawns. If we like it, then it’s a joke.’ Is he joking? ‘Yes… well, no… the thing is that cutting the grass used to be a manly thing to do. A Friday night job. “What a good man,” the women would say. “And look, he’s raked it all up.” But what do we bring to the world now? We’re an inconvenience. I sound like Victor Meldrew, don’t I?’ Maybe a bit. Does he really think the tidy lawn’s days are numbered? ‘They could be. If those wild borders keep coming in, eventually we’ll be stuck in our sheds doing strange man things that smell of turpentine with everyone going, “What the hell is he doing in there?” We’ll be like man-shed islands.’ What would appease him? ‘Give us a bit of rope. Let us pretend that we’re mowing Wembley. Let us imagine we’re ten years old again and can kick a football around on it. Let us stand back and look at a good job, well done. It’s not much to ask, is it?’ Getty Images Lawn not cutting it at the moment Follow Eamonn’s words of wisdom on how to keep it looking lush. Don’t worry if the grass goes brown – it’ll come back. Try to use ‘grey’ water on the lawn. Set up a system that stores it in a tank or water butt. I’ve been told that female dog pee makes worse burns than male dog pee. I don’t know if that’s true but it may be helpful if you’re buying a dog. Consider artificial grass. It’s not good for the environment. But… If you want stripes, get a professional in. You won’t do them straight and your wife will tell you you’ve ballsed it up. A minimum of half an inch is ideal for going barefoot on your lawn. If your house is new and the lawn has been laid on builders’ rubble then you’ll have to strip it back and start again to get it really flat. If the robot lawnmower is misbehaving, check for slugs. Mine wouldn’t go back into its storage house and it was because there were slugs all over the wires, blocking the signal. Something will always be attacking your lawn: dogs, foxes, weeds, weather. Make your peace with that. If you do manage to get your lawn looking like Old Trafford, never kick a football on it. It’ll go into the lavender beds, and you’ll never hear the end of it. 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