I can honestly say that since starting my lawn mowing round in 2002 that I never experienced or saw lawn disease a single time in my first 8 years in this occupation. 8 years of mowing up to 60 or more lawns per week and there was never any issues with lawn disease at all, none. This all changed around 2010 or just slightly before when I first began to notice diseased lawns in my lawn mowing round, and then soon noticed almost immediately that there were more and more diseased lawns as time went on and that this awful problem was spreading rapidly, though I could not fathom where the problem originated and why all of a sudden it was everywhere and had become a curse to my daily work every single day when for the previous 8 years there was no such thing as lawn disease that I ever encountered.
this Greenlees Park Couch lawn was immaculately perfect and dark green for 10 years
until... soon after bringing the first Sir Walter lawn into my mowing round
after 8 years of mowing lawns - I'd never seen anything like it before - I was clueless
I'd brought the disease home with me - from the 1 single Sir Walter lawn in my round
this is the exact same Greenlees Park Couch lawn as the above pictures of it being destroyed by disease
As I write this article now in 2025 I can say as a veteran lawn mowing contractor with decades of experience, that Australia has been in the midst of an epidemic of lawn disease across the entire nation for the past 15 years or longer, and before this time there was almost no such thing as lawn disease in Australia that was of any consequence at all, except for the occasional unfortunate lawns which succumbed to such problems every so often.
While the origins of this epidemic of lawn disease across the homes and yards of Australia alluded me for a very long time, at some point all the pieces of the puzzle fit together in a single moment of massive realisations of almost a full decade of experience with this horrible evil epidemic which had trashed and destroyed so many lawns across the nation, which had caused so many problems for so many people, and which I had been dealing with in my daily workload for so long as a vicious curse that could never be solved.
While I had for a long time made adjustments to my lawn mowing practices so as to best isolate the diseased lawns in my round by various means such as having multiple lawn mowers for clean and diseased lawns, washing lawn mowers multiple times per day, spraying machinery with fungicides, and planning each day to have the cleanest lawns first and the worst lawns last, the reality was that these enormous efforts on my part did almost nothing to curb the spread of lawn disease that I kept seeing spreading everywhere.
shortening the life span of all equipment
incredible untold hours of lost time
all to stop the spread of disease from Sir Walter lawns
and it works !!
I could see that the effects of my extreme sanitation routines and work practices were very successful in isolating diseased lawns. This was a cause of satisfaction of course, but the problem of lawn disease just kept spreading across lawns and getting worse, no matter what things I did to stop anything I might have been doing to aid in this spread, which I know now that due to my hygienic work practice I was not contributing to at all.
I could not figure out the mystery of this horrible curse… until one day I did.
As I quoted for mowing a new job and spoke to the customer, whose Buffalo lawn I could see was also diseased and after I had pointed this out to the customer, the words of truth of the matter just came out of my mouth without any forethought at all, and instantly this decade long mystery was solved when I mentioned very matter-of-factly that every Sir Walter lawn in my round was diseased.
There. Right there. The truth. Sir Walter buffalo grass was the cause of the lawn disease epidemic in Australia. And the moment those words came from my mouth I knew I had now solved the mystery of this curse. And the moment I drove away from that quote I went through in my mind all of the diseased lawns in my round at that time, then all of the diseased lawns that I had in my round in the 10 years prior, and the truth indeed set me free, finally.
The truth was this…
The epidemic of lawn disease I began seeing was at the exact same time that Sir Walter buffalo grass advertising and marketing began at extremes, and as a result this was the time around 2009 or 2010 when I first began seeing these new Sir Walter lawns in my round for the first time in Western Australia, both Sir Walter and what would become the lawn disease epidemic across Australia emerged at exactly the same time, together.
you can see the last healthy part of this Sir Walter lawn at the top left
the lawn is being eaten alive by lawn disease
just like almost every other Sir Walter lawn I have seen for 15 years
. . .
now look around at all the beautiful photos of lawns across this website...
all taken care of by me over years and decades... with no disease at all
thanks to my meticulous management in keeping my machinery as perfectly clean as possible
Further realisations around 2020 or a little earlier that almost every single soft leaf buffalo grass lawn in my round for the past decade was diseased, without exception, and that due to massive marketing campaigns almost every soft leaf buffalo lawn in my round was in fact Sir Walter.
Everything came together at once, the truth was now known.
Sir Walter is a lawn variety which is extremely prone to developing disease, more than any other lawn variety, in fact, from my own experiences as a lawn mowing contractor with 23 years of experience, both before and during this lawn disease epidemic in Australia, I’ve witnessed that all Sir Walter lawns have an almost 100% certainty of developing lawn disease, it’s only ever a matter of time as to when the outbreak will occur.
And once a Sir Walter lawn is diseased, it will remain diseased, forever.
Fungicide treatments are available of course, but their results are hit and miss, professional treatments are a far better option with far greater results, but even if the disease is eradicated it will return again within weeks or months, maybe a year if lucky, and then it is a continuing battle forever against constant re-infestation or constant outbreaks because the disease was never fully eradicated at all.
Sir Walter as a soft leaf Buffalo grass on its own is not that bad of a grass, and it can be said that it is a good quality soft leaf Buffalo grass variety which when in peak condition and well maintained can look very good, there are other Buffalo varieties that are better, but Sir Walter on its own is okay too. Which is all well and good… the trouble is of course that what good is a decent lawn variety if there is an almost 100% certainty that the lawn will eventually become diseased and become trashed, remain in shockingly bad condition, or is constantly yellow and straw coloured, or even destroyed as the years roll past.
This is the ugly truth about Sir Walter.
This is why Sir Walter is the worst grass in Australia.
Sir Walter draws disease like a magnet, and is almost 100% certain to develop disease.
And due to the extreme marketing efforts that surrounded the selling of this grass for so long, the spread of this lawn variety has reached into every street in Australia, and from so many diseased Sir Walter lawns across Australia, the disease then spreads to other neighbouring lawns in the street, and around and around the lawn disease goes, until we reach a point that we reached a very long time ago that we have an epidemic of lawn disease around Australia, and I blame Sir Walter for it all, because that is the absolute truth I have seen every day for so many years.
Lawn diseases can affect all lawn types, and the disease from Sir Walter lawns can cross over to other lawn varieties too, especially other soft leaf Buffalo grasses are highly vulnerable to infestation, and Couch lawns too, though when grown in thriving environments with lots of sun a Couch lawn can often resist and remove the disease on its own if cross contamination is removed from being a contributing factor of causality.
This means that there is no point in planting a different soft buffalo lawn type next to a Sir Walter lawn, including one type in the front yard and Sir Walter in the backyard, because once the Sir Walter is diseased, so too will become the other soft buffalo grass too. I’ve personally seen this happen, and all it takes is for the owner to walk on the diseased lawn and then onto the clean lawn. This means that if you have a diseased Sir Walter lawn, don’t just plant a different buffalo variety in the other part of the yard, first remove the Sir Walter lawn entirely, and replace both areas.
I had one customer for 14 years with an old style buffalo lawn that was probably 40 years old, maybe older. That lawn was in perfect health for all that time, including throughout the time I took care of the lawn right up to about 2024. Just before then the power company came through and installed underground powerlines in the street, and on every verge they dug up they repaired the damaged lawn with Sir Walter roll on turf, with no concern at all for what the lawn variety that was growing there. You know what I’m going to say next, don’t you… yes within just a couple of months of those new patches of Sir Walter lawn going down, that customer’s verge lawn was destroyed by disease, and that disease then spread to his front yard and to his back yard. His entire lawn was wrecked by ignorant people planting Sir Walter everywhere the power company went. That lawn was mowed by a cylinder mower, which none of the soft buffalo lawns in my round were, so in order to isolate that diseased lawn away from my only cylinder mower (worth around $6,000), I had no choice but to cancel that customer’s service in order to protect other customers lawns from his lawn disease which came to him from Sir Walter lawn which he did not plant.
until one day the power company replaced this slightly damaged verge lawn with a few patches of Sir Walter
within months this entire verge and front and back lawns were destroyed by disease
the owner taped off a part of the lawn for over a year trying to get it to repair - to no avail
I had no choice except to protect my other customers cylinder mowed lawns - and cancel the cut after 14 years
At the same time and with the same power company installing more underground powerlines not far away, another customer with a perfect Couch verge lawn and front yard lawn also had Sir Walter buffalo planted to repair the damage done to their verge lawn, despite their lawn being Couch. Take a guess at what I’m going to say next… Yes, within a couple of months of Sir Walter repair patches being planted their verge lawn had become diseased and in terrible condition, the disease then spread to their front lawn too, now both their lawns are trashed with disease, when for the decade or more that I had mowed their lawns prior they were in perfect condition, despite the lawn disease epidemic everywhere else. My extreme methods of hygiene and cleanliness of my lawn mowing equipment kept their lawns in perfectly good health. Today I manage their lawns the same as I do other diseased Sir Walter lawns, with separate lawn mowing equipment and at times of the day after I have mowed all the clean lawns.
I see landscaping contractors make peoples backyards beautiful, then they plant Sir Walter out of habit, without ever seeing the end result of their bad decisions, which the owners then have to live with, and which I have to manage every day in my round, forever. They don’t have a clue.
Homeowners persuaded by massive marketing and advertising campaigns over decades, plant Sir Walter and have no clue of what they’re doing, nor of what they’re going to have to deal with for the years and decades to come.
I see some of my customers with diseased Sir Walter lawns come to me to ask advice, and I tell them what the problem is with their lawns and give the best advice possible to help their treatments, which is to apply fungicide, to remove any excess shade if there is any, and that’s about it, that’s the best they can do, and for many the problem is manageable though the disease and treatments remain constant.
I see others of my customers who do not come to me to ask the advice of a lowly lawn mowing man, and who instead go to the hardware store staff to ask for advice of what is wrong with their lawns. In every single instance I see the exact same horrible stupid advice given and practices being done to try to repair heavily diseased Sir Walter lawns. These customers are all being persuaded by ignorant and poorly trained hardware store staff to throw bags and bags of black soil all over their lawns to try to cure what ails them, and it is of course all done in vain, and neither customer nor hardware staff have any inkling of a clue that they are dealing with severe lawn disease, and nor do they know that their Sir Walter lawn is the sole cause of that problem.
to put down bags of expensive black dirt - for no result or improvement at all
they have no clue Australia is dealing with an epidemic of lawn disease
they should be selling lawn fungicides by the barrel
Those hardware store staff and their trainers are completely ignorant of the lawn disease epidemic all over Australia, ignorant about what is causing it, and ignorant about how to treat so many diseased and trashed lawns. They need to stop telling people to put down bags of black soil onto their lawns and to instead be selling lawn fungicide treatments in 4 litre bottles! And then advising their customers to consider ripping out the Sir Walter lawns in their yards, and for goodness sakes, if they are selling Sir Walter, they need to stop right now.
Ladies and Gentlemen, hearken to my words, hear the truth.
I’ve been dealing with this epidemic of lawn disease every day for 15 years, I have become a master at managing it in my lawn mowing round. I see it on almost every single Sir Walter lawn, as soon as I see this grass planted I know what’s coming down the road, it’s only a matter of time, it’s a ticking clock to when it’s going to happen.
Extreme practices of hygiene for my lawn mowing equipment, usually requiring multiple washings of equipment per work day, does miraculous wonders to stop the spread of lawn disease on my part and is proven to work over years. However, for me the cost is not only so much wasted time and extra work each day, the cost also directly comes out of my pocket, when due to so many washings with water my machinery constantly needs repairs to damaged parts, and the practice also severely shortens the lifespan of these same lawn mowers, which as years roll past amounts to many thousands of dollars lost and wasted solely due to dealing with this lawn disease epidemic.
I do this every day whenever the diseased Sir Walter lawns are especially bad that day
look carefully - two identical lawn mowers are colour coded on their handles
red tape mower is for diseased Sir Walter lawns - green tape mower is for all clean lawns
meticulous attention to detail and vigilance is required every day to prevent the spread of disease
This is the ugly truth about Sir Walter, the worst grass in Australia.
The truth has been a long time coming, and today I hope it will set you free.
Australia, we can have good lawns again, clean, free from diseases and in good health. Now we know what the problem has been for all this time, we can all work together to correct it and bring health back to our lawns once again.
This is my advice, for what it's worth...
1. stop buying Sir Walter - this grass needs to disappear from sale in Australia
2. remove your Sir Walter lawn if that's an easy enough option for you
3. stop planting buffalo grass in full sun areas, Couch and Zoysia and Male Sterile Kikuyu are perfect here
4. soft buffalo grass is best suited for more shaded lawn areas, buy anything other than Sir Walter
5. if your neighbour has a diseased Sir Walter lawn, try to put up obstacles to stop any person or animal crossing from that lawn to yours
6. that turf farms stop growing Sir Walter and switch to growing better turf types, as well as better advising their customers on better lawn varieties which may be better suited to their own individual needs, such as advising Couch, Zoysia, and MSK for high sun areas and not buffalo grass, and then advising any other soft buffalo grass than Sir Walter for any more highly shaded lawn areas
year after year after decade after decade
I hate Sir Walter. It has been a curse and the bane of my professional existence and daily work life for 15 years, and I know this awful grass will remain a curse on me until the day I retire from this lawn mowing business, which occupation has in every other aspect of my life been an incredible blessing. I have 2 great wishes for my lawn mowing work, life and business, one is to have a quality 19" self propelled contractor's lawn mower that can go up steps, and the other is that Sir Walter would die! Sadly, both of these wishes will probably always allude me.
Finally, I must say that I lay no blame on anyone who has been responsible for growing or marketing this grass over the years. Growing grass on a turf farm with the enormous amounts of fertilisers and chemicals and treatments they use for each crop, and then cutting out and removing each crop for sale, is entirely different to having a home lawn which sits on its own without much intervention or treatments at all except for the occasional lawn mowing. It is possible that those who have grown and marketed Sir Walter over all these years were just as ignorant of its extremely proclivity towards disease as those uneducated hardware store staff who also have no clue whatsoever.
expect this once or twice a year
thick, hard, long, crunchy spikes beneath your feet
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