Where do you live?

What kind of grass are you planning to put down?

Is there much shade on the area?

Are you planning to water it?

Will there be pets or people playing on it?

I agree with your groundsman - you don't want to rototill. But I agree for a different reason. When you fluff up the soil with a tiller, you cannot get the subsurface even. When it settles back down it settles to the shape of that uneven surface down below. The settling process starts as soon as you stop fluffing it, so it gets bumpy right away.

Hi, and thanks for such a quick
response !!!!

We live in East Wittering on the South
Coast, the seed I was planning on using is the BS ChildsPlay Lawn Seed … the
one listed in the link here

http://www.bostonseeds.com/products/1/Grass-Seeds/1/Lawn-Seeds/

There will be youngsters …. But older
youngsters …. more likely to be having friends from Uni camping on it rather
than skidding on their knees.

There will be a dog as well, we look
after Canine Partners dogs at the weekend and the last one we had ripped the
other part of the lawn to bits playing fetch – bless her - although we are very
low on the water table so it does remain quite “soggy” in the winter months.

What do you think on the idea of
rollering it as he suggested and will the seed take / germinate if it’s a hard
compact surface post rollering … he did suggest watering to stop the seed all blowing
down to one end of the garden as much as anything and would just buy a
sprinkler if needs be.

My concern with this is most guides
tend to say rake over the soil once you’ve laid the seed which if it’s even
more compact than now won’t be possible although it would flatten it out nicely
and could also use it on the other part of the lawn which could do with some
levelling as well … especially to flatten out the damage the dog did J

Thanks again for your input!!!!

You are firmly in the cool weather grass area. That's the important part about location. You also have mild summers, so seeding this time of year should be fine.

Here in the US Mother Nature reseeds the great grasslands by using hooved animals. Picture huge herds of bison wandering through the grassland knocking grass seed off the plants as they meander through. They knock the seed to the ground and then walk (or stampede) on it. The surface of the soil is only slightly broken by the animal activity. It turns out the pressure their large hooves exert on the ground is about the same per square centimeter as a human walking. The ground is not plowed, rototilled, or covered with mulches. The seed goes down and gets walked on. You can simulate that with a water fillable roller. Here we can rent them at a rental store. Many people here have good luck seeding over top of relatively hard soil and covering that with a light layer of compost, sand, or topsoil. With sand or topsoil I would rather mix the seed in and then spread it all. With compost I would cover it at a rate of 1 cubic meter per 100 square meters. You don't want to bury the seed. Grass seed germinates at the surface of the soil.

Before you try that, try this to soften your soil. Spray about 100cc per 100 square meters of any kind of clear shampoo. Use one that smells nice as long as it does not have conditioners in it. Follow that up with 2-3 cm of water to wash it down into the soil. Shampoo is a surfactant that helps water penetrate deeper into the soil. Give it 3 full weeks to work. After that the rain should penetrate better and hopefully reduce the soggy factor.

When soil remains soggy for days at a time, it kills off some of the beneficial microbes which rely on air to survive. After that the soil will more suited to supporting swamp type grasses and plants and not lawn type grasses. Do you have a low lying yard that collects rain? If you brought in top soil or sand could you raise the yard to a point where it drained better?

Here's the grass you are considering:

• Contains: 48% amenity perennial ryegrass, 34% strong creeping
  red fescue, 10% chewings fescue, 6% slender creeping red fescue and 2%
  highland bent
• Sow at 50 grams per sq/m - 20kg covers 400sq/m

Only one thing bothers me about that mix - the highland bent. Over here the creeping bentgrass plant is considered an invasive weed. Bent grass seed is the size of dust, so 2% by weight can amount to a high proportion of the seed count in the bag. You might ask a local garden center to see if they are familiar with this variety of highland bent. Ask them how it behaves in your area.

You have a magnificent gardening resource in Prince Charles. I'm not sure how to contact him, but I believe he is anonymously active in Internet organic gardening.