Lawn rooting problems

Hi

If anyone could advise with this little lawn problem i'd be most appreciative.

I laid this lawn 18 months ago. I dug up the remnants of the old lawn, which was sparse and badly damaged with moss. I turned and fertilised the soil (which is very clay based) and broke it up as much as possible so that it was good and loose/fine. I laid the lawn on top and left for 2 months to begin to root before first mow. After this I mowed it very long for the first 6-9months, gradually reducing the length. The lawn had appeared to begin rooting well and was looking good, but over last summer began to loose density very quickly along the one edge and by this summer had died all along this edge. The roots had also died and the seam/edge of the turf could be lifted again.

This particular edge spends most of the day in the shade and we obviously had the wettest summer ever last year so i think these are contributory factors to it's demise. I have tested the soil which is ph neutral.

The question is how to rectify the problem. I have previously scraped up the extensive moss on the previously lawn and put down seed/soil/comp mix to get it going but the response was poor. The seed used was a basic "all round" grass of no particular description. I don't want to go starting a potentially expensive solution without knowing whether it will work before hand, so was hoping someone here might be able to set me on the right path. The whole lawn seems to be a bit unhappy.

Many thanks

Stu

 

Hi Stuart,

Grass won't grow in full shade, so I suspect this is the majority of the problem.
You can also see a pattern where the summer perennials have overlapped onto the lawn shading out the grass further.
Even "shade tolerant" grass needs a couple of hours of sunshine a day. If it's not getting that (and you can't do anything to rectify it, such as due to a fence) then I would reduce the size of the lawn, extend the border and plant something else that will be happy to grow there!

Kris