UK lawns suffering from historic drought

By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent
Published: 8:00AM BST 26 Jun 2010 Wimbledon may be looking green but the rest of Britain’s lawns are already turning brown this summer due to a combination of unusually dry weather and an invasion of hungry bugs. The coldest winter for 30 years caused pink and white patches to appear on lawns earlier in the year as fungus grew under the snow. Now a lack of rainfall has made it impossible to generate green growth during the important months of May and June and the situation could get worse with hosepipe bans imposed in some areas. Gardens are also suffering from chafer beetle larvae, which are flourishing in the warm weather and eating the roots of grass. Trevor Bishop, Head of Water Resources at the Environment Agency, said it has been the driest start to the year for half a century in the North West and hosepipe bans will be imposed later this summer. He said Wales has not seen such conditions since the ‘great drought’ of 1976 and rivers in the South West are also running low. Overall the rainfall for England and Wales has been 34-35mm, half what it should be for May and June when gardeners are putting fertiliser on their lawns to make them grow. “It is not a good year for lawns,” said Mr Bishop. “But the good news is grass is designed to go brown in dry periods and it should recover quickly if the rain comes.” At the moment the Met Office is forecasting rain in the north over the next month but dry over much of the rest of the country, which is good news for farmers bringing in the hay but could be disastrous for gardeners. Guy Barter of the Royal Horticultural Society said the average ‘water soil deficit’ is four inches, meaning it will take at least that much rain to fall for the grass to recover. This level of dryness is usually not reached until July or August and he said gardeners are concerned there will not be the enough rainfall for lawns to recover over the next few months. …

Lawns suffering from drought