When the Lawn Burns Out, Switzerland Rolls It Out

A Swiss lawn is usually expected to do two things at once: look immaculate and require very little from anyone. The hot, dry summer politely refused to cooperate. Across gardens and parks, grass turned brown, thin and exhausted, and now the country is buying its way back to green with rolled turf.

At Roland Zahnd’s farm in Wünnewil FR, the business is running at full speed. His field looks almost suspiciously neat: even, dense, freshly watered and ready for harvest. Zahnd says orders have piled up and that he is getting more short-notice requests than usual, especially after the summer’s damage became impossible to ignore. The phone, as these things go, keeps ringing.

The harvest itself is a small lesson in modern impatience. A machine cuts the turf in strips, rolls them up and places them on pallets for transport. The grass has grown here for around two years, been fertilised, watered generously and mown up to three times a week. That is the part nobody sees when they want an instant lawn.

For homeowners, the appeal is obvious. In the garden of the Roggo family, the new turf was laid only a few days ago, after heat and building work had left the area looking, in Lisbeth Roggo’s words, like a desert. Her husband Benno Roggo added that, with their dog Sam, they wanted a lawn they could use immediately after moving in. The alternative, as any gardener knows, is waiting.

Erich Kaderli, who laid the turf for the Roggos, puts it bluntly: rolled turf needs less patience. Seeded grass takes about two months before a surface can be used; rolled turf needs roughly two weeks. Both still need proper care, which is a detail that tends to be discovered after the invoice has been paid. And rolled turf is more expensive, especially on larger plots, where the cost starts to matter.

Still, the market is clearly there. Kaderli says his team is busy with restorations after the dry, hot summer and that the waiting list is long. Demand for a well-kept green lawn remains strong, climate change or not. The irony is almost too neat: the weather gets harsher, and the appetite for a perfect lawn does not shrink one bit.

Zahnd is not pessimistic about the future of grass. He says water remains essential and that grass does not enjoy extreme heat, yet newer varieties can cope with temperatures of up to 30 degrees Celsius. In other words, the lawn industry is adapting, because the rest of us are not about to give up the illusion of order in the garden.

Written by Thomas Nussbaumer thomas.nussbaumer@alpineweekly.com