Amused by the ridiculous sweeping generalisations on here by people who are too lazy to fully understand the options but happy to be deeply rude and offensive to others anyway.
There are huge varieties of artificial grass - expensive ones absolutely do not look shit. They don’t smell if looked after properly. They don’t flood if decent and laid properly in the right area. They can last for very long periods. The people making sweeping generalisations must only know people with shit artificial grass, people who are dirty, or people who have made very poor choices.
One area of our garden is small. We have artificial grass as the soil there does not allow for grass to grow properly. As evidenced by our neighbours on both sides who just had dead lawn and weeds where they should have grass. We could have to all paved I guess, but that would look stark and also be rubbish for our dog and child.
We also have a wild flower roof garden, a moss garden at the side of the house, borders full of a rich variety of plants, a beautiful big cherry tree, bird feeders, bee houses, pots with a variety of plants and much more. We part own a shared grass garden too. I’m pretty comfortable that our small piece of artificial grass in that context doesn’t make us chavs/idiots/disgusting/earth destroyers etc etc. The many snails, spiders, worms, slugs, bees and birds that share the space with us seem pretty content too.
Good to know there are all these eco friendly people though who don’t have artificial grass and presumably also only have one child (or ideally none), no pets, no car, have never had a helium balloon, don’t drink soft drinks from plastic bottles with virgin PET, didn’t use disposable nappies, always wear a mooncup etc etc etc - in reality of course we all have a responsibility to make informed and balanced choices to limit our negative ecological impact as best as we reasonably can for our own circumstances.