How essential is a lawn?

[FolornLawn]

We have a 4 bed house in a 20 year old estate. Typical housing stock, mostly 3 and 4 beds, families and some older people. Pretty much all the houses have smallish gardens and kids play in the street if they want to go on bikes, play chase etc. We are also 2 mins walk from a beach, so families go there a lot.

We're doing our garden up and I'm wondering whether we should bite the bullet and get rid of the lawn. If we kept it it would be about 2.5m x 3m, so about the right size for a picnic/sunbathing but definitely not big enough for a game of football/badminton.

I'm worried about devaluing the house if we remove it. Do people who are buying 4 bed houses find a lawn essential?

I'm keen on lush gardens so there would be plenty of planting, climbers etc, it wouldn't be a sterile concrete zone.

My retirement dream is a small house with a court yard garden and a lovely green house. Plenty of pots and flowerbeds but no bloody grass. To have a nice lawn as opposed to a patch of grass is really hard work for very little return. I would prefer to spend that time on flowers.

Lawns are vastly overrated. I did have a tiny one in part of my garden but my hens have destroyed it . As long as you have somewhere to sit then you don’t need a lawn at all.

I like a lawn but if done properly a garden can look nice without grass, I suspect most families with young children would like a lawn for children to play on but being a person without young children I would probably prefer a cottage garden feel with small gravel paths and lots of plants.

Grass is pretty important to things like bee’s and insects so for that reason I’m not a fan of fake grass but I think a garden full of plants but no lawn can be equally as beneficial to nature as a lawn.