Your recommendations, thoughts etc would be a great help.
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Browse Forums Landscape & Garden Design 1 Dec 08, 2009 7:59 pm We are getting wintergreen lawn in the next week or so, what are your experiences with this type of lawn? I was a bit hesitant at first and guess I still am a little as I was originally wanting to get soft leaf buffalo lawn. Your recommendations, thoughts etc would be a great help. ![]() Re: Wintergreen Lawn 2Dec 08, 2009 8:29 pm ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() WARNING! RANT ABOUT TO OCCUR ![]() This stuff is fantastic in the hands of greenkeepers who have the means and resources to keep it looking good. Absolutely stunning turf when mowed every day with a reel / cylinder mower and edged once a week with a proper edger. You can get the leaves very very small and the turf perfect for bowling greens and golf greens, so popular with greenkeepers and the like. Couch is said to be the worlds 2nd worst weed problem. Buggered if I know what is the first, but if the couch is 2nd, I'd hate to know what the worst is like ![]() It is said couches are the toughest and they are right, but they won't look very good. From what i have seen, they are barely alive from the figures stated. To get them looking good, domestically they consume more nutrients, more water and more maintenance dollars than any other turf variety. They are also a right pain the bum for National Parks where illegal dumping of lawn clippings means they are extremely hard and expensive to weed out. They are the most invasive for garden beds and no pretty little garden edging will keep it out. Roots can go as deep as 5metres but I guess more commonly it will get to 2metres to go under a barrier like retaining wall or fence. Jeeze I should post up pics of just the streets around here and that will say it all ![]() It doesn't look flash in winter and I don't care what they say, I have seen very few domestic couch lawns looking good then. I can get them looking good but most don't in winter. The people behind us have it and I live below a high retaining wall. it keep coming up in my garden ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() These are heavily promoted more over east than WA now days after 20 years plus of heavy use here in landscaping and we are just understanding the impact they are having on our environment. Perth uses more fertilisers than anywhere else in Australia and makes up for a very large % of the countries use just in the metro area. Our rivers are stuffed. Cheap to grow and productive for turf growers as they offer excellent returns for them. Cheap to buy as well for the customer. Expensive to maintain and expensive for the environment. The cost is the only factor in the success of it and the heavy use of it by landscape contractors doing house and land packages. Fair enough I guess because they run a tight ship to make money from those packages. You are buying a F1 racing car when all you need is a Corolla. Other varieties like Empire Zoysia and the wonderful buffalos are expensive to buy in comparison to couches but much cheaper and easier from then on ![]() I might add I am not singling out just wintergreen here. The same goes for all the couches. When you see this stuff in national parks, it just breaks ya heart at the damage it does. Windsor Green, Greenlees Park are all six of one, half a dozen of the other in my opinion. Don't get me wrong though, these are wonderful turfs in the right hands. However couches would be the single most responsible turf for why people get fedup with their lawns, sick of seeing it incvade garden beds and going for plastic grass ![]() ![]() The thoughts and opinions of some of our other members heavily orientated to turf, like grasshopper, will no doubt put a balance on this topic. My views are from personal experience over many years and I started out in the turf industry as a young bloke as well. I can walk down my street, and look in every street around me and nearly every house has a heap of couch in the garden beds. Re: Wintergreen Lawn 3Dec 08, 2009 9:25 pm Oh dear, I probably should keep out of this but...... My father is 70 years old and has a large and beautiful garden, he loves gardening and has done it for a life time in several houses - he always uses santa anna or similar and looks beautiful with regular maitenance. We laid our own lawn from instant lawn on Anzac day, I forget exactly which version it is but it is a sort of couch and it is looking very healthy now, with minimal watering and fortnightly mowing and edging. We have it bordered in a half metre path all the way around and runners have not got under the path. this pic is a few weeks old, even the last patchy bits shown here are now covered. I had casa blanca, a similar lawn, in my old house with success too. So, Im not an expert but my experience over more than 20 years of gardening and Dad's experience of over 50 years of gardening, couch's can be successful in home gardens. Admittedly, we only speak for SA, conditons in other states may not be the same. http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/jj187/nurselovescoffee/HPIM1445.jpg However, on some things I certainly agree with you Fu - these lawns need a half metre path all around - do not attempt to grow anything in the lawn (like trees; unless you have a thick concrete border around them) - if you are not committed to maitenance, forget it - the runners will get invasive and are very hard to eradicate - prevention is essential here - responsible disposal of lawn clippings (and any plant matter) is neccesary, no arguments from me there. ![]() Re: Wintergreen Lawn 4Dec 10, 2009 10:27 pm Fu, Yes,yes, yes. But I must disagree on why our rivers are stuffed, it's not from fertilising couch lawn too much. Any lawn uses nutrient run off, they're good for the environment, they capture nutrient run off and utilise it. Lawns (including couch) were around before there were problems with rivers. Excessive fertilising is a problem in WA with the sand profile, but with more lawns and less pavers there would be less nutrients reaching into our rivers Re: Wintergreen Lawn 5Dec 10, 2009 11:09 pm That would only happen if the public were better educated about how to responsibly use fertilisers and pesticides. Also better soilprep needs to be taught to folks. That is what will cement the turf industry into a much better position for the future as conditions and crap alternatives emerge. The old or uneducated in landscaping will be a bain in just a few years to our industries, if not already. This is why I love what Costa (sbs) is doing, bring it to the people ![]() Re: Wintergreen Lawn 6Dec 11, 2009 9:29 pm yeah, but even badly prepared turf is better than pavers or concrete in an area that turf would grow Re: Wintergreen Lawn 8Dec 11, 2009 11:56 pm Jeeze Fu, now I'm thinking I'll have to turn down the free turf that we get in our estate and fork out the dosh for something like Empire Zoysia! The house we're living in at the moment has Wintergreen and it is terribly invasive. Keeping it out of the garden beds. It really is a pain in the arse. New beginnings. Re: Wintergreen Lawn 11Dec 12, 2009 12:46 pm The couch will get into that easy as. If it were my house I'd go dopwn the road and get a photo of an example for you in a wall much higher and deeper. I don't think they will like me doing that though ![]() it will go to poo in the shade as Grasshopper says ![]() Re: Wintergreen Lawn 12Jan 08, 2011 11:59 am We're just getting to the handover stage of our house. The house we've been renting for the last 18 months has wintergreen couch. The only good thing is we now know from firsthand experience that we never want to deal with that stuff again after pulling it out of the beds all this time. It's tenacious...like some kind of horticultural horror movie. You weed the beds and within a month or two, it's taken over again. The landscaper provided as part of our new build called and sent the paperwork around. They only supply wintergreen unless we pay to upgrade to something else. Money well spent from our perspective. I wouldn't get wintergreen couch if they paid US to do it. Re: Wintergreen Lawn 13Jan 22, 2011 1:04 pm It is cheap and does the job. It is tough, but ohhhhh so invasive. However I love nothing better than playing on a beautiful couch green. Its like seeing a Tiger in the wild, free and happy. Domestically it is a sad, unhealthy angry turf kept caged and trying to get out ![]() the leaves that are now underground go yellow, the tips that poke through photosynthesise and have chlorophyll, same reason they grow rhubarb in the dark. 5 5534 |