My lawn started to turn brown in early July. Can I get it back to green before it goes totally brown? One of my friends heard that once it is dormant, it will not come back until the fall.

July begins true summer in Michigan. We have had few soaking rains to benefit gardens and lawns. So, lawns that are not watered consistently will go brown and dormant to survive the lack of moisture.

Your friend is partially correct, assuming you are relying solely on Mother Nature to water your lawn. If your grass is healthy when summer approaches, it will naturally go dormant and turn brown. When temperatures cool down in fall and there is more rain as the seasons change, the grass naturally perks up green again.

You don’t need to panic that your brown lawn means it will die. It simply means the activity above ground shuts down until more water becomes available. The grass has food stored in its roots and will recover easily as soon as water becomes available.

Therefore, if you want the lawn to reactivate, you need to devise a consistent watering schedule and more closely monitor natural rainfall. Next, be careful not to mow your lawn too short during summer months. Leaving the lawn at 2 to 3 inches provides shade to the turf roots. Taller grass also helps prevent evaporation and makes recovery easier.

You can prevent a lawn from going dormant during a dry, hot summer by keeping it evenly watered. How much water depends on the type of soil. Clay soils hold water better than sandy soils, which drain quickly. Set out your favorite sprinkler and place a large-mouth jar or container in the spray pattern. Watch to see when you’ve collected about two inches of water and note how much time it took. Two inches of water is enough to penetrate any type of soil 6 to 8 inches deep. By augmenting natural rainfall, you can return your lawn to green status and avoid the summer dormancy period.

Each year my impatiens grow very tall (over 2 feet) and are healthy, but they are not covered with flowers like those I see at other homes and even commercial plantings. How can I get my impatiens to grow lower and give me that “carpet of color” effect?

Impatiens are a good selection for shady spots for a number of reasons—the plants thrive in both beds and containers, plus they come in a wide range of flower colors including red, orange, salmon, rose, pink, white, violet, and lavender blue. New Guinea impatiens also offer exciting variations in leaf color.

With proper care, impatiens will fill your flower beds with color until frost. To ensure impatiens flourish, you need to do several things. First, plant impatiens in the right soil. The plants prefer well-drained soils with a pH of 6.0 to 6.5. After preparing the soil, you are ready to plant.

Choose healthy transplants, free of disease and pests, from a local nursery or garden center. The common impatiens actually prefer shade. The New Guinea impatiens with variegated foliage will tolerate morning sun. Take this into consideration when you select plants. Space tall-growing varieties 18 inches apart and compact varieties 8 to 10 inches apart. The closer they are planted, the taller and leggier the plants grow.

Once plants are in their containers or beds, provide them with ample water. Impatiens need plenty of water during the hottest parts of the summer. Check plants regularly. You may need to water daily during hot weather. Plants under stress from insufficient water will not bloom as heavily as healthy plants. Use soaker or drip hoses in flower beds. These hoses put the water where it’s needed (the roots) and are more economical than overhead sprinkling.

Impatiens respond well to fertilizing. Applying a water soluble fertilizer once a week encourages foliage and flower development.

When the summer really begins to bake the garden, impatiens may look spindly and leggy with only tufts of foliage at the top of long stems. There’s an easy solution to that problem: Pinch or cut back stems to within three inches of the plant’s base. Impatiens have suppressed leaf buds along their stems. When you remove the upper growth, the plant responds by opening the suppressed buds. This pruning will encourage a new flush of growth and blooming for you to enjoy the rest of the season.

I read that you should never plant the sweetgum tree (Liquidambar styraciflua) between the sidewalk and the street because of the spreading roots, but is this true for all varieties, such as ‘Moraine,’ ‘Burgundy,’ and ‘Rotundiloba?’ Which variety is more cold hardy in Michigan? I read that ‘Rotundiloba’ has no spiky gumball fruit, but is it hardy to zone 5? Finally, which variety can be counted on for reliable fall color?

Sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua) grows in a narrow pyramid to a height of 75 feet and may spread to 50 feet. The beautifully glossy, star-shaped leaves turn bright red, purple, yellow or orange in the fall. On some trees, particularly in the northern part of its range, branches are covered with characteristic corky projections. The trunk is normally straight and does not divide into double or multiple leaders. Side branches are small in diameter on young trees, creating a pyramidal form. The bark becomes deeply ridged at about 25 years old. Sweetgum makes a nice conical shade tree for large properties when it is young, developing a more oval or rounded canopy as it grows older as several branches become dominant and grow in diameter.

Be careful when locating sweetgum as a street tree since its large, aggressive roots may lift curbs and sidewalks. Plant trees 8 to 10 feet or more from curbs. (Much of the root system is shallow.) The 1-inch round fruit may be a litter nuisance in the fall; people could slip and fall on the fruit on hard surfaces, such as roads, patios, and sidewalks.

The tree should be planted in soil with a pH of 7 or less. Chlorosis is often seen in alkaline soils. The seeds provide food for wildlife and will often readily germinate in shrub and groundcover beds, requiring their removal to maintain a neat landscape appearance. Although it grows at a moderate pace, sweetgum is rarely attacked by pests, and tolerates wet soils. Trees grow well in deep soil, and poorly in shallow, droughty soil. It is native to bottomlands and moist soils and tolerates only some (if any) drought. Existing trees often die back near the top of the crown, apparently due to extreme sensitivity to construction injury to the root system, or drought injury. The tree leafs out early in the spring and is sometimes damaged by frost.

The cultivar ‘Rotundiloba’ is fruitless. The leaves have rounded tips on this variety, and turn deep purple in the fall. It is hardy to zone 5b. The leaves of ‘Burgundy’ turn bright red-purple in the fall, and this variety is hardy to zone 6. In the fall, leaves are held on the tree longer than the species. The cultivar ‘Moraine’ is the most cold hardy cultivar known today. The star-shaped leaves turn bright red, purple, yellow or orange in the fall, and it is hardy to zone 5. It is the “smallest” of the cultivars with a mature height of 60 feet and a spread to 40 feet.