To remove the lawn in a family garden?

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And create a grown up space instead?

It's fine to do so. I have. It may count against you if you have plans to resell to a young family though.

Depends on the age of your children, I suppose.

I can recall the day my mum asked if I'd finished playing in the garden, I clarified if she meant that day or forever. She meant forever! I said yes but we were all in secondary school by then and none of us were really into football, etc. so didn't need the space.

Prior to that we had swings, climbing frame and sandpit.

Lawns are overrated.

Muddy and high maintenance.

Half the reason I wanted to buy this house was because of it's sensible patio/gravel garden. Without my glasses on I can pretend it's sand and I'm on a beach.

Occasionally I see a neighbour dragging their lawn mower from their garage and I want to open it and scream, "No grass here, sucker..!"

I like a bit of green though. I also like carpets indoors despite hard floors being so much easier to clean.

The removal of lawns etc does contribute to flash flooding. Don’t underestimate the value of vegetation in slowing down and reducing runoff of precipitation. Maybe in the scale of your garden it won’t make much difference but if everyone did it the impact would be considerable.

do you have children (yours/grandchildren/close friends) who play there?

Are you planning on selling your house? If that's some way ahead would you have some money to re-lay grass?

It’s fine, but you need to consider what you’ll replace it with and also as Haphazard points out, deal with water issues.

Hard landscaping is also often more expensive than grass.

You could have a gravel garden (look up Beth Chatto). I think you still need some greenery or shrubs though. You could put in quite deep borders as you have a reasonable amount of space.

Hire a garden designer and do it well and you could add value to your property.

I'm looking to buy at the moment and houses with a totally paved back garden are offputting - the thought of all that work lifting the paving slabs to get some green back.

Your garden, do as you please. However, many people would not buy a house without a green space. I’d want to factor in the cost of removing paving and returning it to lawn.

It is quite possible to design a garden which doesn't have a lawn without it being covered in paving. Removal of a lawn does not necessarily contribute to flash flooding - indeed if you replace it with plants with a greater capacity for water uptake, it could reduce the flash flooding risk.

Thanks for all the responses. I had posted a long explanation straight after the photos but that was lost. What the photos don't show is the patio - access is from the kitchen door and French doors in sitting room.

It's a 4 bed semi on a street of 3 bed houses - mostly terraces. Due to an extension by the original owner in 1970 and a garage conversion, the ground floor is 40% larger than all the neighbours. I bought it last year for £340k. Ceiling price of street is about £300K for a 3 bed terrace though - mine was more expensive as inside had been "done". I'm planning to stay here long term - for the next 25 years until I retire, and then will downsize.

It's just me and my 2 year old DD, but we have lots of play dates in the garden, especially in the summer. My mum and sister have both said my idea to turn it into a gravel garden, with lots of paths is a silly idea because my DD will need grass for the paddling pool and soon will be wanting to put up a tent in the garden etc. I a open to her having a part of the garden to play with - but making the lawn even tinier will make mowing it seem even more a waste of time.

I know that hard landscaping can be very expensive - my budget for the whole garden is about £3 k. From that I would like a new metal shed as the wooden one is falling to bits, and is on bare earth so would need to pay someone to pour concrete as a base, to run electricity out into the garden so that I can have a light over the back gate when I am taking the bins out at night, and to put some things for me into the garden - a lovely bench or arbour to sit and read, a timber disguise shed for the recycling bins on the patio (next to kitchen door) and the wheelie bins, and some lovely plants - I'd like some standard roses, standard magnolia, standard fruit trees and lots of scented climbers, grape vines etc. It's what to do about the lawn really - as at the moment you look out and just see the back fence, and it looks so boxy and suburban and dull...

We’ve just astroturfed part of the back garden.

We have 2 areas, tops end fenced off with DDs playhouse, trampoline, raised beds greenhouse, patios area (it gets the sun all day). This is large gravel and bark chipped (chipped on playground area)

The end nearest the house for from our lean to, to patio and then what was mud (2 big dogs tear arseing round) had enough of the mud and now have AstroTurf (very easy to clean) and no more mud. It’s v easy to clean and bonus. Still green 👍

I wouldn't gravel it, gravel makes it unusable. It's hard to walk on never mind anything else. Just paths and gravel makes it unusable and you'll probably regret it when your daughter gets a little older.

My friend did this, and regrets it. Too much gravel. If you're going to do anything I'd patio over the whole thing. It's unusable apart from the little patio area and is a little daft and she's now thinking of ways to get rid of the gravel.

Since you aren't looking to move it doesn't matter from that point, but I would say that not having a 'proper' lawn (ours is currently turf on gravel and concrete) is irritating for paddling pool, swing etc.- things that need a soft underneath or attaching to the ground.

Getting rid of that big conifer and some lawn could give you a nice area with space left for daughter to run around.

If you must get rid of grass, put in a playhouse and pots so that your daughter has a focus away from 'random toys on grass'?

Sounds like I need to keep the lawn then! The photo on the left is how the garden is now after the rowan tree (poisonous berries) was removed, a conifer removed from my beds and the fences painted - the photo in the right was the before photo as it was before that was done. The massive conifer at the back is in the neighbours garden - and necessary as they have a trampoline right behind it!

If you're struggling with maintenance, as much as I hate Astro turf, it could be a solution for you. As said though, I would not put gravel down though, as all gravel areas become unusuable and hurt little knees if they run across it.

Here it is today in all its glory! Wheelie bins and recycling in pride of place - argh !

And the patio. I'll leave the decking as whilst dated is still in good condition. The shed is in the sunniest spot of the garden annoyingly but I can see why it was put there as you wouldn't want to sit out so close to the neighbours ...

Could you for the next few years have bark rather than gravel? Much softer, would be fine both for paddling pool and for tent. Also for bare feet - I had to our gravel paths bare foot when I was young, and it needed care - you couldn't just run across.

Lawns need regular maintenance, mowing every week in season for example. If your life is busy, it's more relaxing to have a garden which looks good on a "whenever I feel like it" regime. And a tent or a paddling pool left out more than 3 days will make the grass go yellow.

Once they're past 5, lawn is of limited use except for football. More fun to have a garden with little areas which feel private for 'dens" and which can be pressed into service for all sorts of fantasy areas.

Agree wholeheartedly about your desire for shrubs etc - you're much more likely to use your garden if you can't everything in it from the window.

You could mix it up a bit - some bits could go down as patio, you could do some bits with crushed slate rather than gravel (easier to change around and nicer) leave some deep borders for your plants, and then have a good chunk of it down as chip bark for DD to play on. My friend did something similar last year and it looks really good.

This is sort of what I mean. Bit of a combination of everything. Get thee to Pinterest - some brilliant ideas. Fgs don't get decking though

And this-I see they're actually using rubber chips

We removed our lawn and replaced with gravel, paving and raised beds with some pots, too. We have some hardy herbs planted in the gravel and some alpines in little piles of larger stones. We also have a large decked area that was already there. Our small DC all love the garden - they especially like moving gravel from one area to another with dumper trucks, buckets etc. And they use their ride-on toys fine on the paved bits, get stuck in the gravel, make a game of having to be towed back to the road, etc. They love it and so do we! It cost 5k 5 years ago, but the garden slopes so a lot of the cost was the hard landscaping required to level it out a bit and put a step in. It's also a larger area (from what I can tell) than yours and the price included planting which you could do yourself. Go for it!

Thanks for all the great suggestions - bark is a good idea, as if I get fed up I can use it for mulching the beds anyway. Thanks also for the idea of the cost involved