Back at Lindum HQ in Yorkshire the various wildflower mats have been nurtured in the polytunnel trying to achieve a good show of flowers and herbs just in time for the opening. As every other grower for Chelsea will know, this cold Spring has posed considerable challenges in this respect. The BBC came for a day last week to film us explaining why and how we grow wildflower turf, which will hopefully be included in the Chelsea coverage schedule next week. Bees and other pollinators rummaging around the emerging flowers provided the camera team with plenty to focus in the polytunnel.

Lorries left yesterday and today, loaded with multi tiered pallets to avoid the wildflowers being crushed and Roger and Alan are looking forward to transforming the soil mounds into areas of grass, wildflowers and perennial planting.

See pictures of our wildflower turf that has just arrived above (untrimmed) and the posts and blue string on site.

For more photos see our Twitter page.

For existing lawns, the following notes from the TGA about why you should not water established lawns, and how to look after your established lawn during drought should prove helpful.

Why you should not water established lawns

There is no need to water established lawns.  In this era of climate change and environmental uncertainty, the watering of established lawns is wasteful and un-necessary.  

Don’t worry if your lawn goes brown during a drought. Going brown is the natural survival mechanism of grass. When water is in short supply grass responds by shutting down. The brown colour shows that the grass has stopped growing until more favourable conditions return.

Watering your established lawn should be avoided in most situations. Here’s why:

•  Water is a precious and limited resource.
•  Watering increases the chance of disease on your lawn. Most lawn diseases thrive in warm, damp conditions.
•  Watering encourages the spread of the weed grass, annual meadow grass. Lawns that are allowed to dry out have much less of this unsightly weed.
•  Watering encourages shallow rooting, which in turn means the lawn is more at risk in dry conditions. So, once you start watering, you can’t stop.
•  Damp soils are easily damaged by compaction during heavy use, e.g. during family barbeques and games on the lawn.
•  Grass is remarkably resilient, and as long as you follow a few basic rules, most lawns will recover completely when the rains finally arrive. Below, we give you some ideas on how to plan ahead, and some hints on how to care for your lawn during a dry summer.

How to look after your lawn during drought

1. Increase mowing height

This is one of the most important measures to take. There are several reasons for this. As you increase the height of cut, the depth of root increases in proportion. As a result, the roots go deeper into the ground in search of moisture. Also, the taller grass helps to shade the ground, and shelter it from the higher temperatures.

Most lawns should not be mown lower than 25mm (1”) at the best of times. In times of drought, lift the height to 35-40mm.

2. Try not to concentrate wear in one place

When the grass goes brown and stops growing it becomes easier to damage. So try to move toys like slides, swings, and goal posts around so that the wear is spread over the lawn. When your friends come over for a BBQ, try and place it in a different place each time.

3. Avoid feed and weedkiller

Brown grass is not growing, so it doesn’t need feeding. Avoid blanket weedkillers at all costs because you risk damaging the grass. You can, of course treat individual weeds with a hand-held spot sprayer. Weeds with deep tap roots, like dandelion, can thrive in drought conditions.

4. Keep the mower blades sharp

Sharp blades produce a nice clean cut. Blunt blades shred and bruise the grass leaf, and the plant loses more water.

5. Apply top-dressing

One of the ways to help your lawn is by applying regular light dressings of compost. This acts as a “mulch” to retain moisture in the soil and protect the grass crowns from the higher temperatures.

6. Annual maintenance to reduce thatch

The removal of thatch by scarifying should be an important part of your lawn maintenance programme. The thatch layer acts like a barrier to rainfall, and stops precious water getting down to the roots. Regular aeration is another useful operation which helps water find its way into the soil.

Helping your lawn recover after a drought

Once the drought has broken you will be able to assess what effect it’s had on your lawn. But be patient, because it may take a week or two before new shoots start appearing. In most cases, your lawn will fully recover.

If any bare areas persist overseed them with a turf seed mixture chosen to match the existing lawn. Scratch up the surface of the bare ground to loosen the soil before seeding. Cover the seed with a thin layer of compost to help germination, and keep damp for a week. Continue to mow the lawn at a height of no less than 25mm to allow the seedlings to establish without being shaded by the existing grass.

In fact biodiversity really was the buzz word at Ecobuild and its relevance to our living landscape industry is greater than ever.

Biodiversity affects us all, not just economically – pollinators are estimated to add £450 million to the value of fruit and vegetable production in the UK – but aesthetically as well.

Seeing birds, bees and butterflies in urban spaces as well as in the countryside gives us a feeling of wellbeing and it is refreshing to see these creatures in amongst the concrete jungle.

However, pollinating insects, such as common butterflies, moths, hoverflies and bees, have been declining over the last 50 years.

Gardens, parks, village greens, churchyards and roundabouts are all obvious places to try and reverse this trend but the greatest potential to make a difference in urban areas is on roofs.

It was particularly refreshing to see so much interest at Ecobuild in our Sedum & Wildflower mats which are specifically designed to be attractive to pollinators and promote biodiversity.

Recent research has shown that the mixtures of wildflowers, herbs, certain perennials and some sedums can provide a wonderful flowering display over several months, to the delight of people and pollinators.

All of our green roof mats have been developed to provide a habitat for conserving biodiversity in urban environments, and are able to survive long periods without rainfall; a key feature given the UK’s changing climate.

Grown on mats, installation is straightforward and provides valuable habitats in our towns and cities for wildlife and insects.

Encouraging biodiversity is something we should all care about and we in the landscape industry are in a position to do something about it.

We in Yorkshire are fortunate in having a rich aquifer beneath us fed by rainfall from the Pennines. That doesn’t mean that we won’t have to be very circumspect in the way in which we use our allocated water. Night watering, although expensive in terms of labour, is much more effective with every drop getting to the roots instead of being blown away or burned off by the midday sun. We also have to be careful not to overwater – that encourages lazy, shallow rooting resulting in a turf continually crying out for water. Newly established turf that hasn’t had a chance to develop deep roots is our priority, as is turf being made ready for market.

In a garden or grassed landscaped area the emphasis should also be on encouraging and developing a deep root system. Shallow rooted turf, which we commonly see on hard, compacted soils, will always suffer first in a drought. Roots like oxygen in the pore spaces in the soil and we can encourage that by hollow coring and tining to loosen the soil and let the air in.

Just like a human body which needs food and oxygen to survive, grass will be stressed without adequate supplies of both, and if a  lack of water is added as an extra stress,it will sulk and go brown.

Plant breeding is helping us by coming up with varieties of grass that are much more tolerant to drought, either by producing very deep root systems, like tall fescues present in our RTF turf grade, or certain finer grasses like hard fescue and crested hairgrass which naturally live on very thin soils and are in our LT2 Low Maintenance turf.

Laying new turf in a period of drought restrictions may seem inadvisable. However, the Environment Agency is so aware of the value of grass surfaces in absorbing rainwater and ultimately returning it to aquifers, that there is currently a derogation allowing the watering of newly laid turf for a period of 28 days which should allow the turf to establish well.

It is worth remembering that grass is an astonishingly resilient plant and that if it does go brown,  it nearly always recovers.

It is too early to be applying spring fertilisers  but within the next 2-3 weeks, if temperatures start to increase, a light application can be made which should help sorry looking grass to recover.

Waterlogged soils will hinder early grass growth and encourage moss, so spike when possible as grass responds really well to air in the root zone.

A light trim with the mower set high on a day when the lawn is dry will improve the look and start to encourage spring growth.

The benefits of grass are so huge in terms of sheer relaxation and stress reduction (proven when walking on grass barefoot), to say nothing of  its properties of cooling and storm water attenuation, that to cast it aside in the general hysteria about hot, dry periods is very shortsighted.

As yet another dry month for those us in the East and South East has drawn to a close, what lessons can be learned as we try to keep our precious patch of lawn green and alive.

Firstly, there is still the watering option.  In the Environment Agency’s latest water status update, they state that no water companies have a hosepipe and sprinkler ban in place.  Water is becoming more expensive and we all have a duty to use it responsibly.  Sprinklers are best put on in the evening when the risk of loss through evaporation is much lower.  There is no point in overwatering – all that does is encourage reliance on surface applied water and discourages deep rooting.

Secondly, reduce the frequency of mowing and bring up the height of cut.  Mowing is stressful to the grass plant if it is not growing fast and we need to do everything to reduce avoidable stress.

Thirdly, there is no point applying fertilisers if the grass is not growing and taking it up.  Scorch could result which is another avoidable stress.

If periods of drought are going to become the norm as a symptom of climate change, longer term thinking is needed, and either or both of the two following options should be considered:

• Water storage – rainwater harvesting and grey water harvesting (eg bath and dishwasher water) is a technology which is becoming simpler and cheaper. Search on the Internet for companies like Watermatic for information on tanks and pumps.
• Change grass type and species – new grasses have the ability to withstand long dry periods.  The one we have had consistent good results with is RTF turf, a turf mix containing rhizomatous tall fescue which, when properly established can put roots down to a depth of 1.5 metres.  We have several types of lawn around the Lindum office and RTF lawn has remained consistently green throughout the last three months.  We can advise on the special management regime to keep this turf growing.  Our LT2 Low Maintenance turf contains the drought tolerant species, crested hair grass, which along with other fescues provides a fine, slow growing mix.

What are your experiences of keeping lawns alive through the recent dry period, and how are you adapting to climate change?

Only with irrigation can any of this happen and we are fortunate to have an aquifer with plentiful supplies deep in the sandstone below our sandy fields.  This is an expensive exercise however, requiring a lot of electricity to power the submersible pumps. 

Our thoughts have been recently turning to renewable energy and whether we can harness the wind which dries out our crops and blows sand throughout the parish if we leave it unprotected.

We are applying to erect one wind turbine to help us contain this escalation of energy costs and as part of the proccess held a public consultation meeting in the local village hall to explain our intentions to our neighbours. 

Whilst most people are in favour of renewable energy, not many want to gaze out onto a turbine, which is why we have taken care to site it where very few will see it.  An interesting evening!

Although there are obvious situations where the artificial product makes sense such as hockey pitches or heavily used mounds in children’s play areas, there are many other reasons why natural grass should always be the preferred option and these are covered in my recent article in Greenkeeper International Magazine on the advantages of natural grass – click to download article (Pdf, 616kb)

Particularly popular has the the LT4 Smooth Stalked Tees grade, where we manage to achieve an even and dense sward of fescues and fine leaved smooth stalked meadow grass. Much more hard wearing than pure fescue this is the perfect tee and fairway turf for courses wanting to avoid perennial ryegrass.

Yes, it is tough maintaining a golf course on a reduced budget, but without good greens and tees golfers can only too easily be tempted elsewhere.

Our LT1 Tournament Greens Turf has come through the winter looking extremely well – clean and free of disease, and now is the perfect time to lay it. The height of the LT1 Tournament Greens is currently 10mm at harvest and will be reduced further once the weather starts to warms up further.

Seeding time will soon be upon us and the ground is drying out nicely. As always we have the regular dilemma of how much of each grade to seed for the following year. Let’s hope we continue to get it right!

This is usually prevented in a professional turf growing situation by the application of a fungicide in late autumn accompanied by a balanced nutrition programme, and I am delighted to see that most of our turf has come out of this extreme winter in a very good condition.

On a domestic lawn, there should not be a long term problem. As soon as the soil warms up the grass will begin to grow, and a spring fertilizer can be applied to aid recovery. Note that fertilizers should not be applied too early to cold, waterlogged soils.