Who knew that lawns were so smart? They are so brilliant that they will actually give you clear-cut signs when they are in need of professional maintenance. And you don't have to be a professional gardener either, just observant. If you pay attention to what your lawn is trying to tell you, it should be relatively easy to keep it looking healthy all year round.

Here are the visual signs your lawn will send when it needs special care and attention:

1. Bare spots that never seem to grow back

2. Plenty of weeds that refuse to go away

3. Grasses in patches from other people's lawns

4. Yellowish 'dead' spots from pet's eliminations

5. Worn out areas from high traffic

6. Anemic-looking areas under trees

7. Strange moldy growths

8. An overall look that says the lawn has seen better days.

All these problems are correctible, but it takes someone who is knowledgeable about what causes each problem and what to do about it. You could do it yourself assuming you own all the required tools, know what chemicals or fertilizers to buy, understand soil chemistry, seeds and sod and have a lot of time to commit to restoring the lawn to good health.

A much better idea is to call in a professional who understands all the problems, has the tools, chemicals, seed or whatever else is necessary and deals with problems like this. When choosing the right person for the job, be sure that they have years of experience behind them and some good references to boot.

Once the professional has been chosen and has done the job of restoring your lawn to good health and good appearance, you can either learn to maintain it and prevent future problems or contract with a professional service for regular lawn care.

What Makes Lawns Go Bad?

The average homeowner is not a lawn care professional and tends to make simple errors that cause problems. Over time, these problems accumulate to the point where it seems beyond your help and an expert is clearly called for. Here are some typical mistakes that people make:

• Watering during hot daytime hours or in evening hours during the summer months. This invites fungus to grow and the water mostly evaporates instead of doing what you intended. Early morning watering is usually best.

• Watering too frequently leads to both fungus and excessive growth, not to mention the need for extra mowing instead of Sunday football. Over watering will also cause a shallow root system hat means in periods of drought, the lawn won't get enough water.

• Too much fertilization will end up burning your lawn instead of making it look green and healthy. You need the proper fertilizer for the type of grass you have and to use it in the quantities suggested by the manufacturer.

• Cutting the grass too short is a very common mistake that homeowner's make. Your front yard should not resemble the greens on an 18-hole golf course. A lawn that is cut too short is highly susceptible to drought, insects and disease. Usually, lawns need to be mowed when the grass is three to five inches high, but cutting it to a height shorter than two inches invites trouble.

• And as for aerating doing it properly requires a special machine that most professionals have but you undoubtedly don't. Just making a bunch of random little holes on your own is more valuable to insects who want to live there than the lawn.

One thing professionals excel at is dealing with lawn-destroying insects such as grubs, sod webworms, chinch bugs and billbugs as well as moles and voles. When a lawn is dense and not mowed too low, these pests will be mostly replaced by beneficial bugs such as ants, spiders and beetles that will control as many as half of all the destructive insects that want to take up residence, by eating their eggs. Just five munching white grubs in a square foot of bad grass with short roots can destroy a lawn quickly. If the lawn is healthy with deep roots, there can be fifteen or twenty grubs per square foot and you will never know it.

To recap, if the overall condition of your lawn is poor and disheveled with dead spots, brown or yellowish spots and lots of weed, it's time to call-in professional help. You can locate experienced professionals on line by searching the web under lawn care. You will also find the right people in the yellow pages of your telephone directory or even by asking a nearby neighbor who has a beautiful lawn.