Have you been tempted by this artificial grass craze?

The British obsession with a perfect lawn is amusing. I’m always reminded of Asterix in Britain, where we see a Briton “manicuring” his lawn with a tiny sickle, and later stopping Roman trespassers, saying, “my garden is smaller than your Rome, but my pilum is bigger than your sternum”. Classic.

Pros and cons. If the artificial lawn lets water through (does it?), it’s better than monoblocking. And it saves energy as it doesn’t need any mowing or watering. But yes, it’s made of plastic and is of no interest to wildlife that I can think of.

Time to accept that if you feel you must have a lawn, it will be a living, evolving thing? Brown and hard in the summer, so what, and I would bet that more kids in the world play football in fields of dirt than not. And what on earth is wrong with a mossy lawn covered in “weeds”? A perfect lawn is a green desert to wildlife.

But what if you physically can’t mow your lawn/meadow anymore? I know of an old lady who had an artifical lawn put down because of that. Not an easy issue.

I would not replace my real lawn with artificial grass, but I have used it in 2 places.
Under bird feeders just becomes a mud patch with all the birds and squirrels, plus my wife topping up the feeders. So a small (1sqM) patch seems t do the trick, but it does stand out from the real grass around it. So far it less water through with issues, but is odd to walk on. That’s probably a bad install by me.
The other place is a small decked area (2-3sqM) with a bench seat on it. This had old decking but it just rotted away. So some OSB boards and artificial grass on top looks much much better. It’s the same grass as above but as distinct from the lawn it does not standout as different. It’s also nice to sit on the bench with bare feet in the “grass”.
I think these days the artificial grass is much better than it was (varying lengths, brown strands, right shades), so it’s worth considering for the right location.

Not even in my wildest dreams would I replace a thing of Nature with a man made artificial piece of plastic . Have you checked into the complaints by footballers using it ? Lots more ligament injuries and other leg injuries . While there could be a -save money case as regards football clubs to me its an abomination to replace your natural/real/ organic grass with stuff made out of recycled plastic. Has it occurred to dog/cat owners who have pets that leave “deposits ” in the grass that the breakdown time in real grass and plastic is a mile different ? Also the smell will linger longer and the uric acid taint the grass requiring hosing down . Which means young children playing in it have a longer risk of infection if it is not kept clean regularly .