To think fake grass is not tacky

[Dizzydodo]

At the Doctors with dd about eczema, GP says it can be triggered by pollen, grass seed etc and asks if she's been in the garden a lot with the nice weather. I say 'yes but we've got fake grass'. GP rolls his eyes, laughs and says 'fake grass?! Like Wayne Rooney? Goodness me!'

I have no idea if Wayne Rooney has fake grass or not and I'm not in the least bit offended by the GP (I think he was trying to be funny) but it got me thinking....does fake grass in my garden make me a wannabe WAG?

sorry. Not for me. I love the look of my mossy patchy lawn.

We let the grass grow at the beginning of the year and counted at least 8 different species of grass in just a square meter of our lawn. (identified via seed heads is much easier!)

Letting it grow we have grasshoppers, common frogs and all kinds of insects and many bees visiting the dandelions.

With fake grass you don't get any of that. Yes it looks nice all year round but eventually it will degrade. Bits will break off it and you'll end up with hundreds of pieces of micro plastics in the ground.

You are absolutely right sparechange. Where do we draw the line? No doubt my line is different to yours, and the yours is different to the next person. We have to weigh up so many things; the materials something is manufactured from, where and how it's produced, how it's transported, how long it will last, how it could be mended/repurposed/recycled/disposed. That's even before we even consider the non-environmental ethical issues like pay and working conditions. I guess cost (not purely financial, obviously) vs benefit is the only way we can assess something, and it's extremely subjective, especially the benefit bit I think.
However, I do feel a wee bit smug now because as chance would have it I do have mostly bare earth/granite floors in my house at present although that's only because we are mid renovation and it obviously won't stay like that forever. So I will have to make that choice at some point, and then I maybe won't be so smug . But I can assure you it won't be a plastic floor! We will almost certainly be reusing most of the original floor boards upstairs, and probably a combination of wood and stone/terracotta downstairs. I am sure that you're right in that none of those choices (besides perhaps reusing what we already have) is perfect.

It is a bit tacky but I want it anyway. We've spent a fortune on our 'lawn' which ends up either a dust bowl or a swamp. It's not laziness - it's being surrounded by big trees and on a hill.

ppeat I am certain that most people are becoming more relaxed about it. That might be because we're so time poor, but if it still has the same positive impact on the environment then that's great! Even the most tendered, preened lawns are highly unlikely to be a monoculture. I used to work for a very wealthy aristocratic family with an enormous historic estate. Even the formal lawns were a mix of grasses, herbs and mosses. They were watered, unfortunately, but not on a Vegas scale as it was in Cornwall right next to the Fal river.

If a garden is for using, then fake grass is completely, utterly fabulous and amazing. We have a big garden, and have had fake grass put over a huge section of it - it's incredible. The quality is amazing. 'Astro-turf' it 'aint!!

If you want something your DCs can use week in, week out, that dries quickly after a thunderstorm, that doesn't get muddy and is soft if they fall on it - good quality, well fitted fake grass is your answer.

I don't care if you call me tacky... I'll be sitting on my rattan sofa, with my patio heaters plugged in to my outdoor sockets, watching my DCs happy on the green, green grass :-).

OP - go ahead - I promise you won't regret it.

soft if they fall on it

As opposed to skull cracking real grass?

But what if your options are concrete or soft fake grass? What should you choose then?

mitzy.. our 'real' lawn was a mixture of sparse, bald hard areas with the occasionally patch of living grass... despite new turf and a few goes at re-seeding.

So perhaps not skull cracking, but not soft, bouncy, squishy, warm, luscious, inviting,, forgiving FAKE GRASS

MumOnACornishFarm I'm not the same dizzy as the OP. I don't have fake grass . I just don't think it's that bad all the time.

Mitzy our clay soil is better for making pots from than sustaining grass. Naked clay baked hard from the sun is not a forgiving landing.

It is a fair point on the plastics front but how many of us have upvc or composite doors, window frames, soffits, laminate kitchens, polypropylene carpets, quite a lot of plastic trim in their car, plastics in their blinds or blackout curtains etc? I don't have fake grass myself but it would be massively hypocritical of me to round on someone for using plastic grass when I have all the things I've just mentioned.

Oh I'm sorry dizzyfucker I've got my dizzies mixed up!

I don't think I can really use DDs 'allergies' as an excuse, she's got a tiny bit of eczema on her arm that's come up for the first time about 6 weeks ago, I don't even know if she is allergic to grass and we had the garden done just after we moved in around Christmas. I must admit I hadn't really considered the environmental aspect, as it's already down I'm not going to change it but if we ever move to another house I do like the idea of a real lawn with a patch of wildflower meadow. As it stands I'll just enjoy my fake grass in my small ish city garden and be envious of your farm cornish!

The question is not whether it is environmentally friendly though (or whatever) it is whether or not it is tacky. I think you'd have to say yes it is, but why let that bother you? It's like false nails or hair extensions - can look great (and often much better than can be achieved by nature alone) but slightly naff nevertheless. You just need to brazen it out - if it's suits you because your child has allergies, you have dogs, you don't want the effort of maintaining a real lawn or you can't grow one then just go for it. Who cares what anyone else thinks?

I have fake grass under the swings.

Dizzydodo don't be jealous, it might have lots of grass, but otherwise it is a huge nightmare!
MrsKoala are you talking about laying new concrete? If it's a choice between concrete that is already there, or ripping it up to lay fake grass, then I guess environmentally speaking the better option would be to keep the concrete and plant up some pots. Unless it's an area prone to flooding? Oh I don't know! It's bloody confusing.
Obelisk I just don't buy into the idea that because plastic is harmful then all plastic products are the same. Dizzy gave the example earlier of plastic contained in solar panels, or what about plastic stents used in heart surgery? We cannot compare those things to plastic grass or disposable plastic cutlery, for instance. So I don't think it would necessarily make you a hypocrit to condemn the use of plastic in a product that isn't actually needed (like the grass) but yet have pvc windows in your home. Yes, you could have wooden windows, but they may not last as long depending on the wood & finish, and they would certainly be unaffordable for many, many people.

Well we had a concrete 'garden' (basically a smashed up pile of rubble wher a conservatory had been ripped up). It was only 3m deep and 6m wide. The garden is north facing so in the shadow of the house and always in shade apart from the sides mar-Sep. We couldn't lay grass as the garden was owned by network rail and they stipulated access if necessary to various man hole drains.

We were going to pave the lot but thought the fake grass we chose was better for the children (we weren't attempting it to look like real grass and were even tempted to just go really kitsch and have it in pink or summat! ).

We had pots of real plants and window Boxes and hanging baskets put the front and some in sunny spots that I moved round the garden chasing the sun. But really our options were so limited.

Our new house is much better with a nice big real lawn and loads of plants and fruit trees and a veg patch and I even planted a 2m/2m 'nature' garden with wild flowers which I just leave to its own devices. The children love it!

I don't mean deep, I mean long. Sorry.

MrsKoala can you really get pink fake grass? That garden does sound tricky. The wild nature garden sounds brilliant though! I'm not surprised that your children love it. I am nagging my OH to build a mud kitchen for us, I know my DS would go bonkers for it.

Yes, loads of different colours. I think people have realised that quite often making something fake look real ends up in it just looking shit and why not just 'go with the faux' as it were. In small spaces i think the colours can look quirky and fun. We painted the 6m high back wall and side walls bright white to reflect as much light as we could. But it really was a hard garden for kids - one of the main reasons we moved.

I can also assure you my house had no wallpaper feature walls or massive signs saying LOVE or pebbly shit. It was a rather understated 'tasteful' victorian Semi with original fireplaces and features, decorated in period colours with solid oak floors and plain white shaker kitchen and granite surfaces. Maybe not everyones cup of tea, but i wouldn't say it was 'tacky' (altho DH had some interesting design ideas ).

Lol at 'pebbly shit'.

I am going to get fake grass as soon as I have saved up for it.

The previous owner of the house concreted the yard to a ludicrous depth, and there's hardcore underneath that, which would all have to come up and be back filled with topsoil and, for the tiny size of the yard, a small piece of fake grass surrounded by raised veg beds, fruit trees, pots of every kind of flower and herb I can fit in will be better both for my family and for the environment.

Is it naff? Probably. Will it improve my family's quality of life? Immeasurably. So naff it is then.

Oh, and to the poster who suggested that the flooding in Cumbria was down to fake grass: Cop on.. the flooding up here was caused by landowners failing to do some really simple things like wilding the becks, planting trees instead of chopping them down so that chinless twats can come and shoot things and forcing dredges of smaller rivers. Unless you're suggesting that we're all astro-turfing the fells up here of course, in which case, they look seriously fucking realistic!

This thread is a bit weird. Expecting to see quotes from it in the Daily Mail in the near future.

It is a weird thread, and people are taking the charge that it's tacky very very seriously. I personally think that it's tacky because I like gardens but who cares what I or anyone else thinks if it suits you.

I'm sure I do/like plenty of things that others would find tacky. I love Salad Cream, for example. Still going to put it in my sandwich regardless