Significant and unusual periods of wet weather throughout 2022 have led to some turf maintenance problems with many outdoor playing surfaces across metropolitan Melbourne, including in Boroondara.
Excessive rainfall and a cooler than usual start to summer 2022-23 made turf maintenance challenging, as the grounds were often too wet to use equipment and growing conditions were very poor. This, combined with the high demand for community sport use across our sportsgrounds and fields, has unfortunately hampered turf growth and recovery.
Many of our grounds are located in floodplains, near creek corridors, and have poor soil profiles. This means the impact of excessive rain is often amplified in these areas.
We know how much our community values high-quality parks and open spaces. That’s why we are carrying out additional maintenance and fertilisation across many of our sportsgrounds and fields to help address the issue. We are also being mindful with how we allocate grounds to local sporting clubs, to allow for better recovery.
This issue is not limited to Boroondara and we are consulting with other Councils facing the same challenges.
If you’ve heard the saying 'it’s like watching grass grow', you will understand it’s a slow process and it may be some time before we see significant improvements. In the meantime, we thank our community for their patience as we work to rectify the issue.