How to make small garden usable for DC in the winter?

[notevenat20]

We have a small 4 metre square (roughly) garden. In the autumn/winter it just turns to mud if DC do anything on it. This year I am willing to spend some money to fix this as it's ridiculous telling DC not to step out into the garden for 5 months a year.

Is there something one can do to make it usable for DC? I don't really care about the grass although it would be nice if it could regrow in Spring.

Fake grass is wonderful. Child friendly and easy to keep swept clean. Even the cheaper versions are perfectly adequate.

Grass mat stuff? That the grass grows through.

Rye grass is much harder wearing than normal grass seed mixes. You could try sowing that in your lawn which may help?

is the garden shaded? is the soil clay or sandy?

If it is heavy soil that doesn't drain & in the shade, that would explain why everything turns to mud so fast.

one option is to embrace the mud - as toddlers, we had a 'mud garden' where big yellow plastic diggers could move mud about a lot - great fun.

Or you could get rid of the lawn altogether and have stone / decking with pots or a flower bed at one edge?

Fake grass. We have a small garden with walls around and the real lawn was always half mud and half weeds. We replaced with fake grass and wow - the dc can go out 10 minutes after it’s rained and it’s dry. No mud. They come in with clean feet. I hate it in theory and love it in practice.