Having a backyard putting green can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. Today, I want to take my experience in my own back yard and break down what you need and what you can expect to get for your time, money, and effort.
A putting green in your back yard doesn’t have to look like the greens at your local golf course to be useful and fun for you and your family. I can even see value in starting with simply cutting an area of your yard as low as your current rotary mower will go and just see how it works. Use it as a target for chipping or a fun place for your kids to play golf on. Don’t be discouraged or believe there’s no value in this simply because it’s not rolling at 10 on the stimp meter. You can also do this with really any grass type that you already have as well (maybe with the exception of St. Augustine).
I would recommend next graduating to any of the cheap, big box, entry level style manual reel mowers. This is going to give you the option to get down around a half inch for cutting height. Again, although not going to perform like a true golf course putting green, you can roll a ball on grass that’s this short. If you can pick yourself up one of these mowers and probably do one sand top dress, you’re going to be off and running with something that you can use. Put a couple tees in the ground and just have fun hitting shots to it and rolling putts with your kids. Turf really looks great at this height and it’s going to start to get you a bit addicted to the process, especially if you’re someone like me. Most existing stands of turf will also be able to continue to survive at this height as well. Your cool season blend will do just fine, as will Zoysia, Bermuda, and probably some other warm season grasses that I don’t have any experience with.
Next, you’re into one of the entry level powered reel mowers (California Trimmer, McLane, Swardman, Allett, etc). Or, and what I recommend, you hunt FB marketplace and other buy, sell, trade sources for a higher blade, higher quality walk behind manual reel mower. I purchased mine from a gentleman for $150 and have seen a couple on occasion in the $200-$250 window. My McLane says it will go down to 3/16 of an inch; however, I think I would have struggled to get down to a quarter or any lower than that. I ran this mower for a couple months and the results I got from it were very good. Again, this will still not get you to green’s height, we need to get to an eighth and below for that. But, this is going to start to really roll nice for you. Once you’re hunting these sub half inch mowing heights, you will need to invest in a wider, nicer rake and complete multiple sand top dresses in order to get the ground smooth enough to mow at this height. I did 4 in 2020 alone to get where I needed to get to. Also, once you’re at these heights, the majority of turf types are going to struggle. Your primary turf is going to be bentgrass for cool season and Bermuda for warm season.
Finally, you can send yourself all in and invest in a used greensmower. Only at this point will you be able to achieve an actual greens height of an eighth of an inch or lower. Also, at this point, you’re going to be doing more projects to start to try and amend your soil structure and increase the sand content by aerating and sweeping sand into the aerate holes. I would also highly highly advice buying a true leveling rake at this point as well as it will be well worth your money for leveling and getting rid of worm castings, which really become a problem when mowing this low.
Having a putting green isn’t as hard as everyone makes it out to be. You just have to be committed to the process and I promise you, within a relatively short period of time, you can be the envy of all of your friends and have a natural grass putting green in your own back yard.
Please let me know any and every question you may have in the comments below.
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