HELP!! my grass is so patchy

jedd22

Hi, me and my partner moved into our house over a year ago and when we first moved in the garden was completely covered in stones and horrible weeds. we spent days moving it all, weeding and getting it to a decent standard to lay turf. Once we laid the new turf it seemed to mostly die off and left it ugly and patchy. As you can see in the supplied pictures, we have a very small garden which is north facing and about half of it is mostly in shade throughout the day. i have just over-seeded the existing lawn/dead patches with ULTRA SHADE grass seed from a reputable grass company but im really not sure how long this will take to kick in, have i done it right? why did the lawn die off so much. if someone could shed some light on my issue i would be eternally grateful!

Thank you. 

Fairygirl

Ironically Jedd - you've answered your own question by asking if we could 'shed light on it' !
Grass needs light and moisture to thrive, and when you have trees and hedging/shrubs nearby, and a north facing aspect, that creates a problem. They make it shady and also suck up lots of moisture, depriving the grass. Even using a shady mix it would be hard for it to do well. In those circumstances, you'd probably be better not having it at all, as you might be spending a lot of time trying to get it to grow. 

Another issue can be drainage. If you're in an area with high rainfall and there isn't adequate drainage, the grass roots will suffer and therefore not establish well either. If that's the case, you can spike the boggy bits with a fork to improve it, but I'm guessing it's the first issue rather than the second.