Pristine, manicured lawn provides a beautiful aesthetic to any lush garden landscape.

However, keeping your lawn green requires a substantial amount of time and care, especially during the winter months when the commonly used kikuyu grass dies off.

But with the newly released Wintergreen grass, you can now stop living in a dry colourless garden in winter. This latest innovation from Advance Seed, allows you to grow green lawn all year round.

Wintergreen offers the answer for those homeowners who are tired of looking enviously at immaculately green golf courses, and large residential estate and botanical gardens in winter, especially when their own home lawn is dry and dusty. It is a cool season grass that withstands low temperatures, allowing you to have a green lawn around your own home throughout the cold winter months.

This ryegrass-based lawn is a cool season, winter over-seeder that, when established, provides a fine textured, shiny and hardwearing green lawn during the winter months. It is currently available in two varieties – Wintergreen, a ryegrass-based, cool season grass; and Wintergreen Pro, a bluegrass variety. Both these innovative products can provide you with the best options to suit your particular needs.

Planting Wintergreen is a simple process which takes place in autumn. First, you need to remove any excess thatch by mowing your existing lawn as short as possible. Set your lawnmower onto the lowest possible setting, and start mowing. It will almost appear like you have damaged the lawn, with patches of ground showing through – but in fact, this is the effect you want to achieve. Then, take a garden fork and loosen the soil under the lawn, after which you can rake the ground to make it as level as possible.

Once you have prepared the area, all you need to do is to evenly sow the Wintergreen seeds over the existing lawn, cover with some lawn dressing. Spread the lawn dressing by hand over the entire area, and be sure not to rake the lawn dressing as to avoid spreading the seeds in unwanted directions. Water the new seeds every morning for 15 minutes until they start to sprout. Thereafter, you can water the lawn for 15 minutes, twice a week.

Once established, this grass will grow throughout winter, keeping your lawn green and lush. It will continue to grow until the spring sets in, and when the temperatures begin to rise, the normal warm season grasses will start to emerge from their dormant period and will take over the role of providing your garden with attractive green lawn.

Wintergreen opens the door for everyone to now benefit from a green lawn all year round – it is affordable and easy to establish and maintain, requiring only moderate moisture.

Wintergreen lawn can withstand severe cold and is well-adapted to both temperate and subtropical climates.

In addition, the seeds are coated using the AgriCOTE technology-process, which means that they have been coated with additional nutrients and pesticides. This process enables the avid gardener to enhance the establishment of the winter lawn by improving the seed-to-soil contact. The added resistance to the many garden pests enabled by the treatment is highly beneficial to the development of healthy seedlings. – Antonella Desi

Readers' Comments Have a comment about this article? Email us now.

I am quite sad about this obviously promotional article. SA is a water-poor country where we should all be aware of sensible water use. There is no reason to waste water on a green lawn all winter. Grow vegetables or don't water. Golf courses are environmental disasters and should not be emulated.

Why should seed have built-in pesticides just 'because'? Please editors- look forward and be more environmentally choosy and less cut-and- paste promo. – Anonymous

Kikuyu doesn’t die in winter. It is the sunlight on the frost that burns it. A quick 2 to 3 minute spray to break the frost icicles and your lawn will stay green all year long. – Anonymous