Artificial grass - pro or con when buying a property?

lixy

A friend had a huge garden and used to have goats to keep the grass under control. He replaced the goats with a robot mower and was very proud of it - it would even take itself off to the recharging point when it was beginning to run out of energy!
I think they are a great solution to the mowing regime demands.

My recharging point when I'm beginning to run out of energy when mowing is the kettle! Sometimes have to 'recharge' more then once......

I really don’t like artificial grass and at my home have a very large and well cared for lawn. (DH’s pride and joy).

My DD rents a house in London with a small garden which gets very little sunshine, it has artificial grass and the children play ball games cartwheels and picnic on it. For them it makes a very good substitute.

Horses for courses etc

It's horrible, & I'd rather mow than vacuum. But I don't think it should affect the houseprice that much? A lovely natural garden helps to get buyers to fall in love with your property, but as long as it's tidy I don't think the state of the garden has very much influence on the asking price in the grand scheme of things?

Our neighbour has it. He was making a terrible noise for ages the other day. In the end I was curious and he has bought a vacuum cleaner for his ‘grass’ but it wasn’t picking up very well so he was having to bend over, pick up the bits and feed them in!

It's horrible stuff. Bad for animals, bad for the environment. And if you have a dog which does its business in the garden, then I'm sorry, but it stinks - no matter what you use on it.

karmalady

I chose not to have a lawn, I have sedum and geranium ground cover with apple trees, fruit bushes, roses and other permanent pops of colour. Plenty of diversity for bumble bees and birds. Rubber stepping stones and variable heights make this garden quite a magical place. I hardly need to weed, it pretty well takes care of itself

Your garden sounds lovely.

My daughter has fake grass, she bought it as a new build, after 6 months the leather jacket infestation just destroyed the grass. Cue many £££’s, digging, treatment and new turf, after a season they came back.
So, fake grass it is, she would prefer real grass, but not made of money.

my back garden has fake grass,after years and literally tens of thousands of pounds to sort out the drainage the only thing that would grow was/is reeds.Its a mudbath if left to natural plants and that despite the 60 feet of trees along the back of the garden.We do have real grass ,rowan trees and loads of bushes at the front but its not somewhere the kids can play as there are no gates or fences allowed in the deeds and the road can get busy .
Since we laid the fake grass its good to watch our GC enjoying themselves and not getting covered in mud.Andthe cats love a blanket to lie on when the sun shines .Must be nice to be so perfect that other peoples choices ,regardless of reason causes such unpleasant remarks

I second that Mollygo. There's no need for unkind remarks is there.

bump

The environmental impact isn't all about whether birds have somewhere to find worms - artificial grass is just a huge amount of plastic that will take an age to disappear, if it ever does.

I do understand why some people do it, I just don't want it myself. I'm investigating replacing my small front lawn with a clover lawn. I don't mind the mowing but the lawn needs relaying anyway as it's very patchy and I quite like the idea of lots of clover flowers in the Summer. I'm a bit worried though that it will just get overtaken by weeds.

karmalady your garden sounds gorgeous.

Bump

Skydancer

It's awful - basically plastic. It would put me off buying a house as I would wonder what the house was like on the inside. You might as well have plastic flowers as well.

Not everybody can share your exquisite taste.

I chose not to have a lawn, I have sedum and geranium ground cover with apple trees, fruit bushes, roses and other permanent pops of colour. Plenty of diversity for bumble bees and birds. Rubber stepping stones and variable heights make this garden quite a magical place. I hardly need to weed, it pretty well takes care of itself

M0nica

Depends how big the area covered is. It works very well on balconies, a few square yards in a pocket hankerchief garden is fine.

Anything larger is an abomination.

Exactly this.

It's awful - basically plastic. It would put me off buying a house as I would wonder what the house was like on the inside. You might as well have plastic flowers as well.

Grandma70s

Extremely bad taste. Better to have a different surface altogether, rather than imitate natural grass. A camomile lawn perhaps?

Yes, all very practical for young children running around, and bigger kids wanting to play football - on a different planet, maybe. An elderly, retired one, perhaps.

Septimia

My thoughts exactly M0nica. In certain circumstances it might be appropriate but it isn't environmentally friendly.

Before I initially had the mini garden of our maisonette reclaimed from a jungle (indoors was a disaster area too) I discounted the idea of artificial grass, even though probably practical with tenants, after seeing a blackbird foraging for worms in the scrubby bits of ‘lawn’.
So proper grass it was.

Although we reluctantly opted for fake 10 years later, there are still beds with plenty of earth for the birds to forage in, though.

I have elderly neighbours (late 80’s, 90) with a tiny garden which they have just laid to artificial grass and raised beds round three sides.
While I would not have it, I can understand that as indeed another (also late 80’s) neighbour who has just spent a lot of money relandscaping her small garden with gravel, pots, stepping tones and climbers.
We’re not all in our 80’s around here BTW !
But each to their own.

I certainly wouldn’t want it, mostly due to the environmental impact. If a house I was purchasing had artificial grass, I’d make it a condition of the post exchange contract that it and it’s subsurface were removed.
I’d have to really want that particular property.

Grandma70s

Extremely bad taste. Better to have a different surface altogether, rather than imitate natural grass. A camomile lawn perhaps?

A bit harsh. You don’t know people’s circumstances.

Bump

I have real grass and I would have no interest whatsoever in having fake grass. Watching the birds outside my window hopping about and foraging for worms is a very uplifting sight.

My garden isn't huge and I can mow the grass in about 15 mins - if my garden was larger and I struggled I still wouldn't contemplate fake grass though.

Extremely bad taste. Better to have a different surface altogether, rather than imitate natural grass. A camomile lawn perhaps?