The grass is always greener in the neighbour’s frontyard: lockdown and a rise of social media pages pitched at lawn fanatics have contributed to a new zeal for the perfect lawn, and an interest in new grass types.
Penrith bricklayer Glenn Russell’s diamond-patterned front lawn is so smooth and sleek that visitors can’t believe it’s not synthetic.“People cross the road to touch it. They take their shoes off,” Russell says.
An explosion in the membership of social media sites such as Lawn Porn, Lawn Addicts, Lawn Fanatics, Lawn Legends, Lawn Tips, and Blokes and their Lawns during lockdown drove lawn envy and competition to new heights, Rogers says.Credit:Just one site – Australian Lawn Fanatics – has nearly 86,000 members, about 6000 more than the number of members in the Liberal Party nationally.ALF reminds members that everyone “started with bare dirt or more weeds than grass and no idea what to do from there”.
Russell has a mower for every cut, plus a groomer, a scarifier to remove thatching, a daily cutter, a whipper snipper and an edger. The trials have generated a stream of visitors stopping to ask for advice, such as what grass works well in their part of Sydney or what soil is best, the Botanic Garden’s trial garden horticulturalist Bryn Hutchinson says.The Botanic Garden is growing 15 plots of different grasses, including native zoysias. They provide the fine-leaf, low growing, soft grass that is popular now. “It is much like a golf course-quality grass to the untrained eye,” Hutchinson says.
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