Lawn Solutions Australia, along with long-serving ambassador Jason Hodges, are excited to announce the appointment of Charlie Albone as a new brand ambassador for the group.
Charles Albone is a leading Australian landscape designer and television presenter known for co-hosting Selling Houses Australia, and now a leading presenter on Better Homes and Gardens. Charlie’s business, Inspired Exteriors, completes leading high end landscape projects in Sydney and across Australia, Singapore, China and the UK. Charlie uses LSA products extensively and has had LSA turf varieties feature on many high-end projects.
Here’s 8 things you can do while you’re stuck at home.
Bored, cooped up and ready to achieve something constructive rather than just falling down that TikTok worm hole? There’s a whole raft of things you could be doing that won’t have you contemplating growing a mullet and changing your name to Tiger King. (If you don’t know what I’m on about you haven’t fallen down the Netflix worm hole just yet).
Build something to be proud of
There is a whole range of things you can buy online and have delivered to keep yourself occupied. There are build kits for almost anything, from robotics to flat pack furniture. You can build a model car, or you can even build a full-size kit-car, with some companies even supplying everything you need to build a Shelby Cobra replica!
Turn your lawn into a fanatic’s dream!
If you are looking to install a new lawn or repair an existing one, the team at Lawn Solutions Australia have an easy to follow step-by-step guide to show you how it’s done. While laying out the turf itself is an easy job, you’ll get best results if you spend some time measuring your lawn area correctly, preparing the area and follow our tips to get your lawn well established afterwards.
With a national network of turf suppliers offering ‘contactless delivery’ there couldn’t be a better time to spruce up your outside space with a new lawn.
Keeping healthy is the most important thing you need to consider during this time. Staying active, eating healthy and maintaining human interaction through your phone and computer.
You can’t go to the gym, but you do have space out on the lawn and the know-how to do anything! (Thanks Google). There are some great training apps out there that can give you a cracking workout and you don’t even need any equipment. Chris Hemsworth is providing a free 6-week offer for his new training app Centr.
Meditation and yoga are also options to help you maintain mental strength and focus. Apps like Calm have started specific campaigns for meditating to help you keep a positive mental space and stay grounded during this time.
Design your garden sanctuary
With Bunnings among other garden centres and nursery’s still being open, you can finally spruce up your run-down garden. From droughts, flooding and everything else that’s been going on lately, your lawn and garden could do with a bit of attention. It’s a good thing to do to get yourself outside and the activity is beneficial for your health. Order your gardening supplies online for delivery to limit any unnecessary contact.
Learn Swahili?
You might not be able to go overseas right now but learning a new language will provide a great new skill and have you ready to communicate with the local tongue when you are able to travel abroad again.
Stay connected with Zoom
Zoom via the app or desktop allows you to stay connected with friends and family via video conferencing. Zoom has video and audio with screen sharing capabilities so you can have a contactless online party with all your friends without leaving the house. You could even team this up with the Netflix party extension, so you can all watch the same movie at the same time for a fun movie night during isolation!
How do astronauts cope with the isolation?
Astronaut Chris Hadfield knows what it feels like to be isolated for long periods of time in space. On his first space mission the internet was a relatively new thing and social media was still a few years away yet. But he didn’t find space to be lonely or isolating. Technology has eased the difficulty of isolation, but the biggest challenge is managing the change to your routine and how we manage the psychological boundaries of what’s normal. Chris says now is a great time to engage in education, to sign up to an online course or learn an instrument. Maybe you could learn Space Oddity by David Bowie too… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaOC9danxNo
Train your brain
Not the first app to be mentioned in this blog, but why not take advantage of the digital tools we have available right? Elevate is a brain training app which is designed to help your mind stay sharp, improving your problem-solving skills, processing speed and cognitive functions.
Hopefully with a few of these ideas you can keep yourself busy, healthy and stay connected. We’re all in this together!
The kids are at home which provides a great opportunity to use your home environment to assist with their learning. Learning area measurement by sitting in a classroom can be quite difficult, particularly if your child is more of a visual learner. Measuring shapes can be easier to comprehend when demonstrated in a physical space, your lawn for example. If you have a square, rectangle, circular or completely abstract shaped lawn, you can use maths to help work out the area. Knowing the size of your lawn will help with ordering turf if required or working out how much product is required to fulfill a particular application rate. Both very helpful skills to have. Plus, your kids don’t even have to know they are learning!
Calculating Area – Steps for your kids
Get a piece of paper and sketch out the areas.
Break up the areas into basic shapes such as squares, rectangles and circles. See our full list below.
Measure each area and write down your measurements.
Calculate how many square metres are in each area and add the totals together.
You can use our online turf area calculator below or see further down how to calculate these manually using some easy formula.
Online turf area calculator
Once you have measured each part of your lawn, our online turf area calculator will calculate the areas for you and total them together.
Calculating the area of different shaped areas manually
Once they have measured each part of your lawn, they can calculate the area of each shape manually using these easy formulae, not much beyond the simple arithmetic and geometry that they learn at school.
Although most of the necessary calculations are generally straightforward, read on to see how to calculate even the most difficult of shapes.
Square
Measure one side of the square, then multiply it by itself (area = s x s)
Example – If the width of the square is 4 metres: 4m x 4m = 16m2
Rectangle or oblong
Measure the height and width of the square, then multiply them together (area = w x h)
Example – If the height is 4 metres and the width is 6 metres: 4m x 6m = 24m2
Triangle
Measure the height and base, then multiply the height by half of the base (area = ½b x h)
Example – If the height is 9 metres and the base is 10 metres: 9m x 5m = 45m2
Parallelogram
Measure the height and base, then multiply together (area = b x h)
Example – If the height is 5 metres and the base is 8 metres: 5m x 8m = 40m2
Trapezoid
Measure the height and the top and bottom edges. Add the top and bottom edges together (b1 + b2). Divide this figure by 2. Multiple by the height. (area = ½ (b1 + b2) x h)
Example – If the top edge (b1) is 5 metres and the bottom edge (b2) is 9 metres, and height is 6 metres: 5m + 9m = 14m. 14 ÷ 2 = 7. 7 x 6 = 42m2
Circle
d = diameter, r = radius Measure the diameter of the circle, then divide this by two to calculate the radius. Multiply the radius by itself, then multiply the total by 3.14. (area = r x r x 3.14) Example – If the diameter is 12 metres, the radius will be 6 metres; multiply 6 metres by 6 metres, then multiply the total by 3.14: 6 x 6 = 36. 36 x 3.14 = 113.04m2
Ellipse or oval
Measure the width and height of the oval, then divide each measurement by two to calculate r1 and r2 (area =r1 x r2 x 3.14). Example – If r1 is 3 metres and r2 is 5 metres: 3m x 5m = 15m. 15m x 3.14 = 47.1m2
Now that the kids have worked out the size of your garden, they can visualise how they would like their garden to look with this fun Colouring in downloadable pdf! Share your kids completed colouring in efforts in the comments on our Facebook page!
