Are these plants/grass dead ?

ZoZoZo

Hi,



I moved into a new-build last year and the garden was seeded with random plants and grass. Originally you could make out the individual squares of grass that were laid as some were greener than others:

but in general it looked healthy and a few months later it was all green and you could no longer pick out the squares. This shows what some of the flowers looked like in June2020:

This shows exact same flowers today:
To me they look completely dead. Similarly, in late Autumn the whole grass stared to turn brown and today it looks completely dead:


Are these all dead (if so, what could have caused this) or will they regain their colour and come back to life in spring ?

Thanks,

ZoZo

lottpaul

On a positive note the flowers are fine - they look like a form of geranium and should green up and flower again.
The grass on the other hand looks beyond help. I don't know what happened to it - probably dried out - but it should never be as brown as that. You may need to replace it completely, either by reseeding or laying new turf.

Reckless Abandonment

Yeah flowers will come back. But the grass.. very strange. Looks like it dried out but can't imagine that happening at this time of year or in the autumn we just had. Is there any chance it got accidentally sprayed with weed killer ?

looksee

If you push aside the dead tops of the geranium you should just about see little new fronds waiting to push up. In a month or two clear off all the top dead stuff (its doing a protection job at the moment, though geranium isn't particularly delicate) and the new plants will look like last years.

The grass looks as though someone re-turfed the worn out edges for house sale purposes - which is why it is in squares - but it was then abandoned and probably doesn't have anything decent underneath, ground could be compressed. It didn't look very happy when it was just down, it was probably already dried out. You could chance leaving it and see if anything comes back, but it will probably grow a lot of weeds. Or you could buy a roll of turf in a little while, pull up the old stuff, I doubt it will need much effort to remove it, and put the new stuff down a bit more carefully than the last lot. When you have removed the dead turf dig the area and add a couple of bags of something like bagged soil or a mix of soil and compost.

Re the geraniums - don't mix these up with the bright red and orange summer flowers called geraniums - those are not geraniums, not even related, they are pelagonums. Actual geraniums are great value as easy low maintenance plants that will keep coming and spread.

jaffa20

It's Geranium Rozanne, will come back fine. Flowers from May to October

Did your spray the pathway at some point? If you spray with a budget on a windy day you can do serious damage to grass and planting. Grass looks dead as a doornail, I'm afraid.