Local Downer lawn care
Established lawns on the old CSIRO research ground
Fox Mowing ACT mows and gardens all over Downer, a small inner north suburb of 1.6 square kilometres bounded by Northbourne Avenue, Antill Street and Phillip Avenue. Downer was gazetted in 1960 and named after Sir John Downer, a South Australian premier and member of the first Senate; its streets follow no naming theme. Before the houses came, the whole area was a CSIRO agricultural research facility, and the buildings that now hold the Downer community centre and shops were put up for the CSIRO in the 1930s. During the Second World War the land grew opium poppies for medicine, and the big pines and gums that still surround the block around the shops were planted as a windbreak for the CSIRO building in that era.
What that means for a lawn in the 2602 postcode is simple. The blocks are sixty years old, the grass on most of them is couch or kikuyu that has been there for decades, and the ground is flat, at 587 metres, with alluvium over the Canberra Formation shale. Old warm-season lawns build up thatch, scalp easily if cut too low and go straw-coloured through winter. The old plantings shed needles, bark and gum leaves all year rather than in one autumn drop. The Camden woollybutts that lined Swinden Street, once the CSIRO driveway, were mostly removed by 2008 and replaced with local gums, so the street canopy is changing too. Our operators work Downer with all of that in mind, on the same rounds as Dickson and Watson.
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