Hello I'm new here, it looked like a good place to get some info so here I am!

I have a large garden and the lawn is just more than I can manage. I've been here 8 years and every summer it gets away from me at least once, needing weeks of mowing and re-mowing to get it short and green again. Currently it's 6-7 weeks since the last mow so as you can imagine, it is very long!

So I want to start again. I've sourced a rotovator - not sure how strong, it belongs to a friend but I haven't seen it. She says it's just a little one, and petrol.

I need to know pretty much everything - preparation, the rotovating itself, preparing the ground afterwards for re-seeding.

This will not be with grass - I'm going for a mix of white clover, daisy, ribwort plantain, speedwell and a few other similar things: still need mowing but nowhere near as much as the current stuff and if I can't manage it for a few weeks, I'll still be able to catch up again.

So, help please! Ideally, I'd like to not have to mow the current lawn short again before I rotovate it but I figure I'll probably have to. I don't mind removing the grass sods post-roto, the overall ground level could do with taking down a little anyway as it's crept up an inch or two over the years.

Thanks