Astroturf in a dark garden which doesn't grow grass well

[BigBirdFlies]

I'm reposting this from chat, but you guys need to go gently on me because I am not a gardener. At all. In fact, my garden is an overgrown lump of weeds at the moment.

So I was thinking of getting garden clearance people in to get rid of all the weeds, dead leaves etc. We can't grow a lawn very easily, the garden is surrounded by trees etc, and has very limited drainage. So I was thinking of astroturf.

Dh thinks this is a terrible idea, that it looks tacky, not as nice as real grass. Well I agree that its not as nice as real grass, but real grass doesn't grow in our garden. We have tried again and again, and each time it only lasts one season. He says that astroturf needs to be hoovered, is this true? How can you clear dead leaves etc from the astroturf? Also we have a dog, can dog poo easily be cleaned off? We used to have chickens, and they probably killed the grass off for good, but I don't think we will be getting chickens again.

So any experiences good and bad of astroturf. I'm particularly interested in hearing experiences of non-gardeners.

We got it four years ago.

We have a patch in the back garden with very poor drainage- it was actually flagged up on the house survey, it is so bad.
BEST thing we have done ( for that particular spot).
The dog uses it for wees and poos, the chickens don't destroy it at all, they are just not interested and that cat like to stretch out on it on sunny days.

We have a lot of trees and shrubs surrounding this area and just use a leaf rake when necessary, but usually just a large, stiff broom, and literally sweep it!

We also karcher it a couple of times a year and it comes up looking like new. No weeds, no mowing, no exceptionally muddy dogs when it rains

My mother in law has put some in her garden that looks awful, the fakest grass you have ever seen. However, we were in our local garden centre the other day and they had some brilliant ones that looked very authentic. So you will have to pay quite a lot to get a decent looking one but they are out there.

Oooh I'm interested in this too. Our back garden is really boggy. Our neighbours have decked their whole garden but we have kids so don't really want to do this, we'd like a lawn for them to play on. But the one we have is too damp for about 90% of the year.
Tooold - so you used some for a poorly drained area? What happens to all the water then, where does it go?!
Love some tips.

Bambamb, we had professionals in to lay ours and they prepared the ground for us. I seem to remember them doing something to make the water drain away, as I had visions of the pretendy grass floating after heavy rain, but to be honest, I really can't remember what they did. Whatever it was, it worked!
SAN yep, you do need to go and look at it. I spotted stuff on line that was much cheaper than what we eventually paid, but ours looks real, until you are actually standing on it

We got it about four months ago and I love it.
We have a slightly sloping garden which is quite dark.
It drains really well and dries really quickly after rain.
The kids love it as it is very soft.
To get the dead leaves etc off, we just brush it every couple of weeks with a stiff brush, this helps to keep the 'grass' looking good too.
We went for an expensive version, really thick and quite natural looking.

We are looking at this too for our currently cobbled back garden, can I ask what the rough cost is fitted please?

Can the people who are happy with theirs please say which brand they have and approx cost per sq ft?

My parents' lawn has completely given up the ghost and I think they are going to have to go for astroturfing the whole 80ft of it - cost is presumably going to be huge but 3 yrs of putting down seeds, laying turf, nothing has worked.

I think we paid about £17.99sqm but we got one that was end of line. Our garden is north facing and like you we had given up trying to grow grass it just didn't happen. We ordered lots and lots of samples from the internet. You definitely get what you pay for. Ours was around midrange because thats all we could afford but it looks real and has improved the garden vastly. Oh and we fitted it ourselves.

I think ours was called something like luxury lawn and for an area of roughly 4m x 4m we paid just over £1000.
Might not be of much use to you though, this was a few years ago and they did everything from digging out the old lawn to putting membrane and whatever other magic things they lay (pebbles and stuff)?
We had 2 men here for most of the day, but not sure if prices will have gone up or down now! I am sure though, that we paid more for the work involved than for the product, so if you are particularly fantastic at gardening/DIY, you might get a bargain!

I would be looking for someone to come in and install it. Thank you, this has been very useful, especially finding out about the range of surfaces, and the need to check samples and shop around. We have two very large raised beds in our garden, so we would be looking to cover around them and the back of the garden, and maybe landscape in some flower beds.

Has anyone used Easigrass?

ours cost £30 per sq/m
it's 30mm thick and is really padded.

Very helpful thanks.

Thanks everyone, I'll pass on the recommendations.

I'm looking for a solution to our horrible concrete back garden. Could you put fake grass straight on to concrete to you think?