To astro turf my garden?

[hibbledobble]

I put beautiful turf down and it's sadly looks like the pennines now: bumpy and lots of dead patches.

Astro turf would mean minimal maintenance and would look good, not good for environment though and pricey.

Wibu to astro turf it? If not, how does one maintain a lawn?

It is in that it is unnatural and ugly.

I think those imagining 'Astro turf' are about 10 years out of date.. artificial grass is far removed from that these days.

I won't put a pic of my garden , but here's a stock image of the artificial grass blending in with natural bushes / landscape.

Still plenty of room for nature 😎

still plenty of room for nature. It's not an making room for nature, it's about nature being everywhere.

I'd have a bouncy castle in my garden before I'd have AstroTurf.

Dailydance where tf did I say I don't recycle? That's ridiculous, sorry.

Sabine nature being everywhere? Are you sure? Do you have a house? I'm not really sure why my little patch of AstroTurf is any worse than my square metres if (acrylic) indoor carpet.

We have planted 100s of plants too and the garden is full of wildlife - bees, butterflies, snails and frogs not to mention a ton of different birds.

Those of you boasting of your untouched daisy meadow eco systems that literally require no treatment, fertiliser, or watering (or electric/petrol cutting - how do they magically not grow too high?!) do you realise you're actually in a pretty priveleged position don't you? To live somewhere with a mature lawn that is big enough to look good when it goes a bit wild?

We have an artificial lawn, gives us more time to work on our allotment. Though I do have a slight worry that one day the committee will find out and we will get drummed out of the allotment society!

If you care even a tiny bit about the environment then please don't Astro-turf. Turn your garden into a wildlife haven; even turn your existing lawn into a wild flower meadow. (All you have to do for that is sprinkle a few seed packets over it)

Rolf.. how would DC play / do sport on a flower patch? Gardens are not just for looking at or birds and worms to mooch... they need to be practical and useful too in many circumstances..

Do those doing the judging not live in houses (and therefore taking up grass space)?

My DH spilled a can of gloss paint on our grass lawn last year. We simply dug out that area, chucked some soil on and reseeded it. Not sure how it would have worked out with AstroTurf.
And you don't need a pristine lawn. Which means you certainly don't need chemicals on it, and if you don't water it then even if it looks a bit brown at times it will soon recover. Apart from mowing, very low maintenance.

BbcEssex even a big standard grass lawn will be a wildlife haven, AND be practical for children to play on. Turning it into a wildflower meadow is another option and would present another type of play option.
I really don't understand people who buy houses with gardens then moan about the maintenance and turn them into plastic outdoor rooms.

• bog standard not big standard

Why don't people understand I don't want a wildlife haven?! I don't like insects and it would hardly be fair to encourage birds if I've got a cat! I'm happy with a few bees who are catered for with my plants. I've never seen a hedgehog in all the years I've lived here either.

I think of astro turf like fake tan and slug eye brows,people who have them think they look natural but really they don't

"Just turn it into a flower meadow!" is becoming the new "let them eat cake." Coming from a position of total privilege and lack of understanding about the lives of other people.

Kind of like people who 'hate' new builds - because they can afford/inherited a period place 🤔

I don't think mine looks natural but I don't care. We see ours as an outdoor carpet and safer than slabs, gravel etc.

I hate new builds and I live in one

I think from a distance the new expensive ones do look real, but when you get closer to it, you know it's plastic.

Trying to sell it to someone saying it looks real probably isn't the way to do it. Nor is reduced maintenance, because they both need maintaining, albeit not natural grass in the winter.

If you like it you like it, but for me I couldn't be sitting there in the summer looking at my plastic grass and pretending it was real. It would put me off buying s house and I'd factor in returfing it.

Grass isn't supposed to be pristine. Ours has daisies and stuff growing in it at the moment. Basically veryone has different tastes, but I suspect in a few years people will be ripping up Astro turf and returfing it to natural lawn, which lasts centuries.

So if I put down a patch of artificial grass it seems I'm a bigger villain than my neighbour who has dug up his grass and has put in a garage, driveway, shed and conservatory. I'm not getting the hate
But if it's a straight choice between a real lawn or a plastic sheet then it has to be a no- brainer - for maintenance and eco reasons a real lawn is the better choice.

I don't claim mine looks real, it just looks a damn sight better than what was there before and is much nicer to walk on!

"Just turn it into a flower meadow!" is becoming the new "let them eat cake." Coming from a position of total privilege and lack of understanding about the lives of other people.
Yep, I'm totally privileged because I suggested one option with a less than pristine lawn is to toss a fivers' worth of flower seed on it.
Obviously that is far more expensive than plastic sheeting.
And the comments on here that their plastic gardens smell of dettol and dog piss is hardly a ringing endorsement of Astro turf!

This is really difficult as I can totally understand both points of view.

What may be the swinger is the maintenance required of a grass lawn: the one person who gave an estimate put it at 3 hours a month. I don't have that much time.

I agree that that he vitriol against astro turf is perhaps a little miss placed as no one has the same anger towards those who pave their gardens, which is something many of my neighbours have done. I'm not sure if there is a degree of snobbery at play.

Asking those of us who don't like astroturf whether we live in houses /why don't we bulldoze our houses to make room for more grass is a bit like asking those who love the convenience/wipe-clean/outdoor-carpet-ness of astroturf why they don't just go the whole hog and remove every bit of inconvenient plant life from their gardens and get them fully apholstered by DFS (i.e slightly ridiculous).

It's possible to be concerned about the impact of plastic grass without being a full on tree dwelling eco warrior, just as it's possible to have an astroturfed garden without being some sort of nature-hating villain.

I hate new builds - I've lived in Victorian terraces and 30's semis all my life - hardly a choice of privilege.

rolf to turn it into a meadow we would need to hire a rotator, get new top soil (as the current soil is rubish and probably part of why it died), fertiliser, seeds, a sprinkler system, a send our dog off to boarding for a few weeks as her urine would kill any new plants. Probably cheaper than astro turfing, but not cost free either.