Lawn disaster - please help!

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We had new turf laid 2 years ago in our new garden and it took well to start with. The problem is that the garden is north facing and very shady with lots of large trees. In no time at all the lawn was full of bare patches.

I have reseeded/filled patches several times with “extra tough grass seed”, “shade-tolerant grass seed” and the like - but it’s now worse than ever. At the far end there is more mud than grass, with just a few clumps of tough-looking grass like islands in an expanse of brown, and even the weeds/moss don’t grow (frankly I’d be happy to have them since at least they’d be green!)

I’d be happy to have something other than grass (what though?) but it needs to be able to tolerate two small children running all over it daily and occasionally kicking a ball around. I can’t really face reseeding it 4 times a year (which is apparently what our next door neighbour does).

Any suggestions or ideas appreciated! Thanks very much.

Established trees and shrubs might be fine, and perennials loving it in nicely dug over beds. But that doesn't mean that the lawn area isn't compacted, poorly drained, or laid over the spot the builders dumped the clay dug out to put the house foundations in.

The likeliest cause of problems is deep shade, but deep shade under trees isn't normally muddy unless there's also a drainage/soil problem. Deep shade and lawn isn't a combination that works.

Is there any chance of a photo or two of the area in question?

I have been poking at the soil and I can’t find any wildlife underneath, except for lots of worms. Nothing that looks like grubs.

That’s what ours looks like after a winter of walking across it (not me, 6 cats and two foxes all taking the same route. I vary my route). It’ll be back to OK in another couple of weeks.

The fact you have tall tufts of grass suggest it is able to grow grass there. If grass was struggling, the tufts wouldn’t look so healthy

I think there are shade-tolerant grasses (eg 'bunch' grasses) or other ornamental varieties that might do better.

I should have asked more clearly, can we get a wider shot or two showing the overall situation with the trees and shade?

When you said 'mud', did you just mean bare earth or actual wet ground that needs wellies?

I agree with the green thumb recommendation. They transformed my lawn from a moss ridden soggy mess to a lovely lawn. And they are very knowledgeable so if it is a problem like grubs they should still be able to help.

I’ve just left for work - so will try to take one later! It’s not too shady at the moment but will be late in the day (and especially when the fruit trees are more in leaf).

I don’t mean wet mud, just bare earth really - though the children always come in absolutely covered in it!

This is interesting - how do you get it back to OK though? By reseeding? Because if I do nothing these tufts/clumps don’t seem to spread. It is still full of bare patches in July.

To add to that last post - I even wondered if I’d bought some kind of “non-spreading” grass seed, as the clumps only seem to get taller and never form any kind of lawn!

In that case I think it will just be a combination of the shade and the trees pulling the goodness/moisture out of the soil. Scattering a top dressing of seed, feed and a bit of compost three of four times a year may be the approach to take. It's always going to look it's worst coming out of winter.

There are less formal grasses and wildflower combinations that could work in an area like this if you're prepared for it to not be a mown bowling green (will never work in shade) and a bit more of a semi-wild woodland play area.

There are less formal grasses and wildflower combinations that could work in an area like this if you're prepared for it to not be a mown bowling green (will never work in shade) and a bit more of a semi-wild woodland play area

I’d be delighted with this! All the wildflowers I’ve looked at seem to need full sun though. Can anyone recommend any alternatives to grass that don’t mind shade and children?

That looks like leather jacket damage to me.

https://gardening.which.co.uk/hc/en-gb/articles/115000185985-Leatherjackets

Are they not chemical heavy?

Not necessarily. The best thing they did for my lawn was scarifying and removing the thatch both of which are totally mechanical. Yes other treatments are chemical but so are most things you use in a garden.

My parents have the green thumb treatment every few months, about £100 a year I think. Has transformed their lawn from a mess of dandelions and moss to a very nice lawn, seems to be worth it.

Was also going to recommend maybe scarifying to get some air into the soil. Seems to get recommended a fair bit on threads like these.

It depends on your definition of chemical, I suppose. If you go for the trivial "everything is made of chemicals" then, yes. But I don't use synthetic chemicals on the garden, I don't (fingers crossed) have major pest problems and I don't use fertilizers.

I shouldn't really read these threads, I'm totally out of sympathy with them. I find a monoculture of grass pretty boring, whether I'm sitting on it or walking across it through flocks of sheep.

By doing nothing. So maybe you do have a deeper seated problem.

Do you want a grass alternative that can be mown? Or shade plants that will survive a bit of trampling?

I’d be delighted with trample-tolerant shade plants! Please do recommend any. As I said, I’d be happy with moss and weeds as long as they are green and spread about.

I have never used any sort of chemicals (apart from H2O etc!) in the garden so am not keen to go down that route at all - but if Green Thumb can manage my lawn by scarifying or suggesting suitable grass types I’d happily pay them £20 a time. A quick look at their website though seems to suggest it’s more like £36 a month which seems a bit steep.

(I’d happily have very little lawn at all, but the children are out there playing almost all year round and would wholeheartedly object if I turned the whole thing over to shrubs and other non-trample-able plants)

This is a pretty rough mix, but it was one of the first came up in a search for shade woodland wildflower.
https://www.wildflower.co.uk/products/wildflower-seed-mixtures/lw8-woodland-heavy-shade-80-20.html

And by rough, I mean it's a wild woodland mix rather than a typical garden mix. It would be great for a play wood though. If you can accept it looking a bit rough rather than manicured, it could be great. But whether it's what you want or could accept from a garden is up to you.

If you re-seed you need to keep the birds off or they will eat most of the seeds. And to give it a chance you would have to keep the children off as well for a while, perhaps you could do a small area at a time and fence it off and net it. Heavy traffic areas are always going to go bald our common path routes are totally grassless. We also have heavy shade and ivy and moss have taken over as the green colour on the ground in the most shady areas. Daisies and buttercups and clover are pretty hardy. I have tried to naturalise wild flowers with little success. I grow foxgloves from seed and plant them out all over but few come back. I've been buying bluebells and winter aconites in the green (and sometimes as bulbs as well) for a couple of years and beginning to see a few decent clumps coming back.

Like you open to more suggestions, the trouble is it's so dry under the trees as well as shady, and we are on thin soil.

Fighting back the cow parsley at the minute (before it seeds) that doesn't seem to care about the trees or the dry, but I don't like it!

We had this problem and could not get grass to grow in the middle part of the garden at all. In the summer the grass was always dead and in the winter it was like a bog.

In the end we kept a strip of grass on either side where it seemed to grow OK and put gravel down on the rest as a sort of wide pathway.

It looks 100% better!