To loathe astroturf/artificial grass?

[Londonwriter]

Our new house has a complete mess of a garden, which needs digging up and starting again.

A neighbour with two DCs and a dog has just renovated their house and has probably 40ft of artificial grass. I think it looks horrible. There's no doubt they've used expensive fake grass, but it is still a lurid featureless green and it's really hot underfoot.

My garden-that-needs-returfing may have yellow grass in the drought, especially where our dog has peed, but it looks natural and in keeping with the surroundings. I don't need year-around green - it's just weird.

Am I a plastic grass bigot? I've had two neighbours, and a guy doing carpentry on our house, all recommend astroturf - having had it installed themselves. They all tell me that I'd come around if I had it installed...

No, yanbu. Plastic grass is truly shit. If the devil were to have a garden, he likely would have it everywhere. HTH.

I quite agree and think it should be banned. It’s not like we need any more plastic introduced to the environment!
It must need hoovering or hosing off, or it’d covered in leaves or other bits, so not exactly maintenance free.

I'm not a fan! I also had to laugh yesterday when i walked past a house with it yesterday and all the weeds underneath had forced their way through!

I agree. I can totally see the practical reasons as it's low maintenance, but think it's a real shame people are reducing habitat for wildlife.

Not a fan of artificial grass, it always looks and feels fake plus I think it starts to look tatty after a number of years. I’d rather mow the lawn!

Terrible.

Our old next door neighbours astroturfed their small front garden. The bordered it with fake, bright red slate rocks. To be honest, it looked like a Lego garden!

YANBU!

People where I live keep getting it. My next door neighbour has it and their dog shits on it - it makes me nauseous. How can it ever be clean? It looks horrible, it feels horrible and it’s monstrous for the environment. We got rid of all it from our garden when we moved in and now we have gorgeous flowers, birds, bees and butterflies. It smells good and is a constant source of pleasure for me. Every time someone else posts on our local FB page that they are putting in fake grass, my heart sinks a little bit more. I just don’t understand why anyone wants their outside space to be plastic and concrete. It’s depressing.

Astroturf is horrible stuff - terrible for the wildlife and the overall environment. It should require planning permission to install.

It lets out loads of microplast into nature
If you fall on it you hurt yourself much more than if you fall on grass
Some of it lets out harmful gasses when the weather is hot

Also it is a really weird thing to do. If people don't want a garden, they should live in a flat instead.

I like mine. Admittedly my garden is small and we barely used it pre child. Was a good low maintenance option for us. When we move we will probably go back to grass though, particularly if we get a dog. I think it is a bit of marmite thing.

I saw a post on FB recently where a woman had her huge lawn covered in gravel...then put a big square of artificial grass in the middle. Dozens of people saying how gorgeous it was, but it looked ridiculous. Whoever put the stones down didn't put any barrier down either, so it's going to be full of grass and weeds poking through soon.
All that so you don't have to mow the lawn...I don't get it.

I love mine! You're not being unreasonable to dislike it, nor am I bring unreasonable to like it. Luckily, no one's forcing you to have it. 😀

Artificial grass is naff as f*ck.

Obviously it's gross and tacky, but as someone extremely lazy married to someone else extremely lazy I can see the upsides to artificial grass.

Just like when we were renting our last house which had a concrete yard instead of a garden we longed for a garden but now we have a garden I can definitely see the advantages of a concrete yard especially this time of year when our garden is mostly bindweed (the low crawling kind in the grass and the tall climbing kind everywhere else).

Yuck.

BUT it's absolutely excellent for kids to play on - no mud, soft, dries super quickly after rain. Just saying!!!

I think it's terrible for wildlife and looks naff, but if someone offered to put it in my garden I'd bite their hand off! I have two young kids and think it would be much easier than the muddy bog that my lawn becomes in winter.

We’ve got it as it stopes the back garden being a mud bath in the winter. We do have another section of garden with plants and veg and flowers in for the wildlife.

I've seen numerous posts on here where fake lawn gets an absolute battering. Thing is though, it's in your neighbours garden and not yours so nothing you can do about it.

We have it as otherwise our garden is just a mud bath we can’t enjoy. No point in having garden if you can’t use or enjoy it, now the children can actually play out there.

It's hideous stuff. It looks absolutely awful.

I did think fleetingly about getting astroturf but then realised its an utter ballache to prepare the ground to put in and a fair bit of upkeep. I like my grass and the feel of it under my feet and so does ds

BUT it's absolutely excellent for kids to play on - no mud, soft, dries super quickly after rain. Just saying!!

Surly getting muddy and the odd scraped knee is the sign of a fun healthy childhood??

Vile stuff. And you can ALWAYS tell, no matter how 'nice' the plastic is.