Country diary: A close-up view of my garden lawn – where is all the grass? | Derek Niemann

Frome, Somerset: The changing climate is changing our gardens, and thanks to the mild, drenched winter, perhaps the biggest change is right under our feet

The ground underfoot is soft, springy, yielding – like walking on pillows. It is a blanket of bedding for blackbirds and hole-nesting tits, and I do not begrudge them the raggedy strips torn off beside the greenhouse. It is not mine to covet, any more than the sky, the stars, or the river in the valley below.

I fall to my knees as if bowing in prayer, and rejoice in the up-close beauty of the garden lawn: the intricate interweaving of spikes, ferny leaves and that startling algal green. When I rise again, my spread hands have left finger impressions, and my retreating tread spongy footprints.

The Royal Horticultural Society quotes the poet Robert B Shaw describing moss as “not so much groundcover as groundhugger”. I cannot be sure of the species, but I think this groundhugger might be rough-stalked feather moss with a side helping of haircap. The cushiony moss has given space to primroses and tiny thyme-leaved speedwell, and there are probably roaming tardigrades too, which go by the enchanting name of moss piglets.

Yet there is one plant that has been all but suppressed under its lush awning. It is hard to find more than the occasional blade of grass within the moss.

The turf wars began here last autumn. In all the gardens around, lawns began to see the results of a new climatic normal. Relentless rain and mild temperatures that are poised to reshape our winters tilted the balance. This man went to mow whole areas of grass last summer that have since been overwhelmed.

The overall parti-coloured aesthetic of grass and moss is not to everyone’s taste. Some call in self-styled green paramedics, with reassuring names on their vans such as Lawncare and Green Fingers. They carry knapsack sprayers that undoubtedly promise to solve the problem. Until the next time, and the next.

Gardeners are still getting their heads around the realities of climate change and the need to adapt our ways, shake off our shibboleths. We’ve had the wet, now we’ll await summer dry to see how our mossy lawns fare. And then decide what to do next.

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