Lawns make gardens look great, are excellent ground covers for suppressing weeds and are one of the few plants that can be continuously cut off just above ground level. However, even the best lawn has problems. One problem with lawns is brown patches caused by plants dying off. This is particularly a problem in summer when there is less water, and lawns that are on a slope, as the water tends to run off and the soil becomes water repellent.

Lawn types that self repair are much better than seed types, or individual plant type lawns, as they tend to be far hardier, and far more wear tolerant. Self repairing lawns are usually runner type lawns, which unfortunately have their own drawbacks. The most major of these drawbacks is the ease of which some types spread. Lawns like Kikuyu and some types of Couch can spread rampantly through adjacent garden beds, under paving, and will require constant maintenance. Installing these types of lawns requires lots of planning around how to keep the lawn retained in the proper area. Santa Ana couch is the best choice for the South Coast, while Kikuyu is the worst type to install here, because it spreads via underground runners, and gets into not only your garden beds, but the neighbour's garden beds as well. It is almost a vicious weed here, and should be avoided at all costs. Lazy landscapers use Kikuyu because it grows anywhere, in many different soil types. It takes a little more preparation and care to successfully grow Santa Ana and have it look good.

All lawns need water to look their best, and in the middle of a drought, it is not easy to abide by restrictions and give the lawns the water they require. Sprinklers are not allowed under current water restrictions, and even subsurface dripper irrigation is being restricted (which is a dumb move by the Government). It is not viable at the moment to install any large amounts of lawn. If you really do need lawn in your new garden, try to reduce the size as much as possible, or perhaps use an alternative to lawn, to help reduce water usage. Please do the environment a favour and don't install five hundred square metres or more of turf, which seems to be a trend at the moment.

 

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Last modified: 17/09/07