Grass lawns generally look similar no matter what the season, certainly until the weather gets hot and dry and the grasses brown and naturally die back into summer dormancy; something increasingly more likely with climatic change.

Being composed of forbs, T-lawns can look different in different seasons and tend not to die back so obviously in hot dry summer weather.

Above are shown two lawn types in July 2013. July 2013 was the third-warmest July since 1910. The first image is of a turf lawn and the second of a T-lawn; both taken on the same day. The lawns were less than 5m apart, on the same soil, and neither lawn had received irrigation of any kind. The turf lawn grasses have entered dormancy and the lawn has browned.

T-lawn forbs do not experience dormancy in the same way and continue to provide a predominantly green lawn for longer. 

It was this lawn behaviour back in the unusually hot and drought-hit summer of 1976 that was highly influential in the development of T-lawns.

May 2025 clearly demonstrates how many lawn forbs can stay green in dry lawns much longer than most lawn grasses.

T-lawn in Spring

T-lawn in Summer

T-lawn foliage in Autumn

Park T-lawn in Winter.

A frosted T-lawn in mid-winter.

Unlike grass lawns, T-lawns show seasonality. They can also be enhanced with early flowering bulbs and corms such as snowdrops, Crocus and Siberian squill, and later in the year with Oxalis and autumn crocus.

FEATURES OF T-LAWNS

Aesthetics

Maintenance

Pollinators

Drainage

Seasonality

Invertebrate Diversity

Scent

Plant Diversity

Fun