Has anyone ever fitted fake grass in their garden?

[MainlyMaynie]

We're thinking of moving to somewhere where the garden would need a lot of sorting to be child-friendly (pond removing etc.). We've only ever had Victorian terraces with back yards and aren't particularly keen to start learning to garden/mow grass etc., but do want something soft for DS to fall over on. Is fake grass ok? What do you lay it on top of?

It comes with instructions - you pack the earth flat, then put sand on for drainage (I think I watched our builders do it). So it needs to be soil not concrete/paving. We have the expensive one so it doesn't look too fake - it's fab as a kids play area (which is what our tiny garden is).

Pluses:
looks good all year
no maintenance
Perks up with a stiff brush
Cat/fox poo can be easily seen and thoroughly disinfected and cleaned away before kids get to it

Minuses:
Gives you static so your kids hair will start to stand on end and you'll get little shocks when you touch something
Anyone with a real lawn takes the p*ss (then admits they wish they had it!)
Weeds still grew up through ours (we had a bindweed problem) but we've got rid of that with Roundup
Hot to touch in the sunshine so you need shoes or you'll burn your feet!

IMHO it's perfect if your garden is quite small and is effectively a child's play area.

We used to have it in our old house, in a small shady garden, and it was great. Agree with everything herethere says except I didn't notice the static. We had hardly any weeds growing through. We have 2 boys who constantly played football on it and there is no way that a small shady lawn could survive that.

I think you do need to buy top of the range for it to look good but we had ours for 4 years and it wasn't showing any signs of wear and tear so I imagine it lasts a long time. I don't think ours was laid particularly well, it was very damp underneath and full of disgusting enormous slugs. I never saw them elsewhere in the garden and they didn't seem to eat any plants so as long as I didn't think about them it wasn't a problem!

Just to clarify re: the weeds, it was only the bindweed that came through because that's such a resilient little b*gger to deal with and had run free over the garden for years before we bought it. Literally two doses of roundup (one to get most of it and a second on the stragglers) and it was gone. It only managed to pop up in about 1/8 of the area to begin with.

Oh and the static - possibly worse as DD has a plastic slide she's always on!

My friend has this and initially I was one of the real lawn people who took the mick. However, it still looks fabulous two years later and now I am jealous.

It sounds like it's not a totally crazy plan then! Not sure I like the sound of the slugs...

can't you lay it over concrete then? our back yard is concreted over and I was wanting some fake grass :(

You can lay it on concrete it just has to be glued down. We're planning on getting it on our patio.

Oooh could people tell me where they got theirs from, the stuff in b&q didn't look that great.