Sir Walter Turf History

Sir Walter has a truly outstanding record and fantastic performance as Australia’s best all round drought resistant lawn grass. What makes Sir Walter so popular is its ability to handle droughts, flooding rains, extremely high and low temperatures (in general, normal Australian conditions)... all the while looking green and healthy.

Sir Walter & Australian Turf
History

Let’s examine the recent landscape of the Australian Turf industry. Buffalo was always a popular choice pre 1950’s due to its low water consumption, tough blade structure and heat tolerance, however it was always slow to establish, suffered poor colour retention and gave thousands of Aussie kids annoying itchy rashes.

Enter Kikuyu – initially imported as a rapid growing cow feed, then popularised as a common lawn variety in the 1960’s. What started as a cheap lawn variety turned into an invasive noxious weed over the eastern coast of Australia.

In the 1990’s, housing trends started shifting dramatically, as did the size and expectations of our struggling lawn varieties. Lawns downsized, houses grew in size and the two battled endlessly for growing shade or blistering sun. A host of new varieties from the USA promised great things but often suffered in our harsh environmental conditions.

Shademaster, an exciting new buffalo breathed new life into a tired market, and paved the way for possibly the largest development in locally engineered turf products. In 1996, a new premium turf variety was born. It was more resilient to disease, pests and fungus... it used far less water, has a lovely wide (yet soft) leaf structure, loved shade and sun plus maintained a rich deep emerald green colour throughout the year. Enter Sir Walter.

Ten years of extensive testing, thousands of lawn installations and the toughest drought and water restrictions in living memory stand a testament to this. Sir Walter lawns have not only survived all this they’ve flourished. They have not died from humidity related funguses as a result of storms or flooding rains (unlike several other varieties). They have not been bothered by extreme water restriction nor has a decade of shade affected them. Insects and lawn grubs haven’t killed them; kids and traffic haven’t worn them out. They have not been completely taken over by wild kikuyu or Couch, nor have the Sir Walter lawns taken over the nearby gardens.

In summary, it’s no wonder Sir Walter now strongly holds the title of the best all round Aussie lawn. With 20 million metres around the country and in excess of 150,000 happy customers. The results speak for themselves.

Sir Walter is grown by most leading turf suppliers under a quality control license arrangement. Each delivery comes with a certificate of authenticity to ensure you have the real thing.