Artificial grass - hit or miss?

[CookieDoughKid]

I'm buying a new build townhouse but it has a north facing garden. It's a small garden and I'll only get sun right at the bottom end (I think).

Given the lack of sun (and time), might I be better off buying artificial turf?
Do you have it and love it? I have dcs so it's great they have a bit of outside space but I don't want to be spending good money on turf if it's not going to fair well in a north facing garden.

I know very little about gardening btw. I just want something low cost and low maintenance! Thanks for reading!

I love ours - have on the front garden. You can get extra bouncy underlay for kids to play on too!

Has anyone laid themselves? I am wondering whether I could cover our cracked and horrid old concrete with artificial grass so that the baby can safely roll about outside.

We've had ours about a year, it's transformed our dirty, hard patio area into a comfortable, clean, safe place for dd to play (we have the underlay Binky mentions). Feels soft (not like astroturf at all), no problems with drainage though it does get warm in very hot weather.

Quod: the company that laid it used a machine to put an even layer of sand down first, presumably for drainage. They also 'tucked' the grass under existing fences so looks very neat and can't see the edges. Definitely couldn't have done that ourselves!

Can anyone recommend a good company in the north west?

We have it as we have 2 big dogs. Best thing ever! It gets a bad time on mumsnet and people can be very rude about the people that have it. By contrast, everyone that has seen it in our garden in real
life raves about it.

Zombie thread. It’s four years old.

We're in the process of having artificial grass fitted.

We went for soft and fluffy Easi Grass Belgravia as the WonderLawn was quite rough feeling.

Both companies will post free samples to your house and both were the same price.

Think what David Attenborough would say.

Where's all this plastic going to end up?

Sister and colleague both have it and love it. Needs hoovering occasionally I understand.

Think of all that plastic, I cannot imagine what it feels like in this heat.

Tacky. It's the worst thing in garden development in years I think. It's up there with fake tits and plastic trout pout. I think future generations will look back and weep

Ok so had to comment on this because a friend just laid her artificial grass at the weekend and she LOVES it.

She said there were no mosquitoes?! And her husband and herself just laid on it in the evening and watched the stars - all very romantic but it has made me consider the benefits of artificial grass!

It's the only green looking grass at the moment.

In the sort of garden you describe it can IMO be a very good idea - if it's good quality and laid properly, which altogether can be quite expensive.
A friend of a dd put it down in the small narrow garden of a small family house. With 2 very little dcs she wanted a soft surface for them to play on so paving was not an option. It looked very nice and worked well.

Having said that, I finally decided against it for the very tiny and then very unkempt garden of a rental property - having seen a blackbird find a worm in what then passed for a 'lawn'. Nearly all the surrounding mini-gardens are paved or gravelled and I felt sorry for the blackbird!

However it does get a fair bit of sun and the new mini lawn laid 6 years ago still looks pretty good.

I have it and love it - we bought our house (new build) 7 years ago and the soil is very poor, meaning grass didn’t grow very well and the garden was always flooding. We had a company come in, remove the turf, put in a drainage trench (using the old patio slabs smashed up inside), lay the membrane and sand and artificial grass, and it’s been fab! Never floods, it’s been in for 3 years so I have the odd puny weed trying to break through but I spray them then pull them up a day or two later. Great for LO to play on although in extreme heat it can be too hot to walk on with bare feet.