Lawn care: mowing, watering and bare patches
A lawn is the thirstiest and most schedule-dependent thing in the garden. How to keep it green without wasting water.
Mowing height decides lawn health
Mow at 2.5 to 5 cm, and never remove more than a third of the blade height at once. Scalping exposes the stems directly to the sun and yellows them, leaving gaps that weeds colonise within weeks. A slightly longer blade shades its own soil, so it needs less water and resists weeds better.
Watering: depth before frequency
Two deep waterings a week beat a short daily one. Water early in the morning: night watering leaves the blades wet for hours and is the direct cause of most fungal lawn disease. Midday watering loses most of its volume to evaporation before it reaches the soil.
Gaps and yellow patches
Before blaming fertiliser or disease, check the irrigation. Most yellow patches come from uneven coverage: a tilted sprinkler, a blocked dripper, or insufficient pressure at the end of a line. A simple test: set empty tins across the lawn, run the system for ten minutes, then compare the water level in each — the variation between them is a map of your problem.
Shade and lawn don't mix
Bermuda grass needs full sun. The area under a dense tree will stay thin and patchy however much water and fertiliser you add, because the constraint is light, not nutrition. The answer there is not more care but a different surface: gravel, a shade-tolerant ground cover, or lifting the tree's canopy by pruning to let more light through.
Question the area itself
A lawn is by a wide margin the largest water line item in a garden. Before extending one, ask how much of it is genuinely used for sitting and play — usually far less than is planted. Shrinking the lawn to its real footprint and covering the rest with gravel or low-water planting cuts both the water bill and the maintenance without losing anything you actually use.