Artificial grass was, up until recently, mainly used on market stalls and sports pitches however lately there has been a lot of developments in this market and it was even seen at this years RHS Chelsea Flower Show in one of the main show gardens. So is it a gardeners faux pas or is it now acceptable to use artificial lawns in todays modern garden?
We recently designed a garden for a couple in Nottinghamshire who were unable to maintain a lawn due to health reasons. Whilst in the initial consultation the client asked "so Neil, what do you think to the idea of an artificial lawn?" My instant reaction was perhaps to skirt around the idea but after much deliberation we decided that in order to keep the garden as maintenance free as possible, whilst keeping an area of 'grass' for the grandchildren to play on, this would be the best way forward.
And so the research started.
I looked around for companies that specialised in these lawns and after a bit of time found a couple that seemed to offer the best value for money whilst keeping the lawn realistic. We had seen 'Lazy Lawn' at the 2009 Chelsea flower show and so they seemed to be the logical first point of contact, they offered a number of options at fairly good prices however in the end we decided to use a company called 'NoMow' who offered a full lawn kit including geotextile, turf, glue and pegs for less that £20 per sq metre.
The lawn arrived in a van and the turf looked like a roll of carpet and after a few jokes from the neighbours about saving the off cuts for their hallway we got to work.
After preparing the ground it took us around a day to install just under 60 sq metres and the process was fairly straight forward, the most important tip is definitely to get the ground as perfect and level as possible before hand and make sure there are a few of you to unroll the carpet/turf as its pretty heavy stuff.
The client was delighted with the end result and to be fair I was pretty impressed as looking from a few metres away you couldn't tell it was artificial. The only obvious sign that it isn't real turf is that its nearly impossible to get a lawn looking as healthly as this one did!
I'm still a fan of a real lawn and there are clearly far more ecological and aesthetic benefits from real grass however clearly in the right place an artificial lawn is a good option, its ideal for gardens with dogs where yellow patches blight the view, roof terraces or areas where real turf just isnt practical and small gardens with no where to store a lawnmower.
