If patches of your lawn have started to feel spongy, lift like a loose carpet, or get torn up overnight by birds, foxes or badgers hunting for a meal, the cause is almost certainly grubs feeding on the roots below.…
When a hot, rainless fortnight turns most lawns the colour of straw, the patches that stay green are almost always tall fescue. It is the most drought-tolerant of the cool-season grasses, and the reason sits underground rather than in the…
A black or bronze ring where the fire pit stood, or a rectangle of yellow under the spot a barbecue sat all afternoon, is one of the fastest ways a summer garden loses its best grass. The heat does the…
A ring of straw coloured grass that widens week by week in July is rarely a watering fault and rarely simple drought. On cool season lawns built from Kentucky bluegrass, annual meadow grass or fine fescue, those spreading circles usually…
On a warm, close July evening the lawn can seem to come alive as thousands of winged ants pour out of the grass at once and take to the air. It looks alarming, and every summer people reach for the…
You water a dry patch of lawn, or a summer shower passes over, and instead of soaking in the water sits on top in little beads or runs off to the edges. Underneath, the soil stays dust dry no matter…
Most lawn grasses grow as separate plants sitting side by side. Kentucky bluegrass does something the others cannot: it spreads sideways underground and knits the whole lawn into a single connected mat. That one trait, the rhizome, is what makes…
If your ryegrass lawn has thinned into ragged brown patches during a hot, sticky July and the tips of the blades look twisted, grey leaf spot is worth ruling in before you blame the drought. This fungal disease attacks perennial…
Reaching for the weedkiller on a hot, sunny afternoon feels like the obvious time to deal with the dandelions and clover taking over. It is also the time most likely to leave you with scorched grass and weeds that shrug…
Most lawn diseases creep. Pythium blight sprints. In the wrong weather it can turn healthy grass into greasy, collapsed streaks in a single night, and a large area can be lost in 24 to 48 hours. The conditions it needs…
