Genie wrote in message ...


The "grassed" area consists of nettles and dandelions, with thin
straggled bits of grass at the edges. The area is shaded by the corner
of the house in the morning, and gets full sun from about 3pm onwards,
so the ground is normally wet underfoot until that point. The area
under the kitchen window gets full sun all day.

I spent a couple of hours last week trying to dig up some of the
nettles at the edge of the "grassed" area to see if it was possible to
remove them without sacrificing what little grass remains. However, I
discovered that there is a web of inch thick nettle roots about 20cm
below the soil surface, and that if I tried pulling them up, the
result looks like the surface of the moon. Am I right in concluding
it's better to redo the lawn from scratch?



If you're looking for a high quality lawn, redo it from scratch.
However, you'll probably get a reasonable result by just mowing it for a
month or two. The nettles won't stand it for long.

--
Anton