CRAZY lazy lawn

[Hedgehoggy]

Not sure whether I'm posting in the right forum, but as this will greatly affect natural environments I considered this section more appropriate than the gardening forum.

I heard an advert on my car radio today selling all the virtues for fake garden lawn! I thought it was a joke so just googled it to find it's for real - is the world going completely mad? I can understand the need for astroturf for football training BUT fake 'lazy garden lawns'???? We're supposed to be preserving natural habitat, not decimating it further. I wonder if the garden-proud folk who buy into this idea will realise the extra work involved by having to wash down dog/cat/wildlife fouling on a daily basis to reduce the risk of disease contamination, as well as the need to remove ALL leaf litter because none of this will be able to break down naturally into an artificial substrate - I noted these points were not mentioned on the company's website .

As planning permission is now required to concrete over gardens because of the effects of surface run-off, I wonder if this form of decimation would also require planning permission as it surely couldn't cope with heavy surface run-off?

[Kayleigh]

I have seen these adds too..no more mowing..ect..
I have thought about the wildlife and the poor blackbirds trying to pick worms out of a plastic lawn...

my lawn is a problem the trees block light so it dont grow thick the dog skids on it churning it up but the wildlife love it..
I am thinking of gravelling the lot and planting into that I will have to have a think..
But it will not be a plastic lawn..

[Hedgehoggy]

Same here Kayleigh, I have areas of my garden which are pure mud-baths after heavy rainfall (of which we get a lot of here!), but it's a natural and organic process. I have leaf litter all year round in the woodland part of my garden, which the wildlife loves, and the leaf litter on my lawn breaks down naturally and completely disappears from sight come the spring (I have never raked the leaves from my lawn! - true definition of 'lazy lawn' gardener imo! ).

[Cotham Marble]

Originally Posted by Hedgehoggy

I heard an advert on my car radio today selling all the virtues for fake garden lawn! I thought it was a joke so just googled it to find it's for real - is the world going completely mad? I can understand the need for astroturf for football training BUT fake 'lazy garden lawns'???? We're supposed to be preserving natural habitat, not decimating it further.

I find the idea of 'fake lawn' pretty repulsive, but looked at relative to how lawns have been manged in the last fifty years, it probably isn't a particularly dreadful environmental development.

Petrol mowers are appalingly polluting for the small size and even electric mowers use large amounts of power and involve significant resource investment just to build. Hand mowing of course is a relative low input activity but very few people cut grass this way anymore. Beyond cutting, and the waste it produces which only a few households home compost, lawn maintenance attracts a vast amount of expenditure on feeds and poisons. Many 'lawn improvers' having peat as an ingredient, extraction of which destrys habitat and releases high CO2 volumes. The search for the holy grail of grass monoculture sees widespread use of selective weedkillers, and the range of pest targetted for the despoilation of lawns includes crane fly and beeetle larvae, and even earth worms ! Matched against all this perhaps 'fake lawns' are a lesser of several evils ?

And to stretch the playing of Devil's Advcate to the limit, I can even see some direct benefits where families with kids get a year round play space that doesn't become a sea of mud in the winter. Less washing, more time outside not using heating, healthier life etc being the result. I'm sure there are better options than 'fake lawns', but given modern lifestyles there are probably plenty of worse ones too.

CM

[wanlock dod]

I'm with CM on this. Lets face it, if you want wildlife then a lawn wouldn't be your first choice, so as an alternative to the bland and overmanaged monoculture of a grass lawn the loss will be minimal. There are people who believe that weedkillers for lawns are potentially threatening some of our water supplies. There are now rather a lot of places where dog owners are required to pick up and remove dog muck even though it is on grass.

If you want a lawn, but don't want the hassle of managing one it has to look like an attractive option, and if a small part of the area that would previously have been lawn can be left unmanaged for nature to do whatever it likes then there could even be wildlife benefits. For somebody who is determined not to have a lawn the best alternative option might be concrete (now there's a nice low maintenence garden for sure).

[Cowgirl]

Whle I agree with most of the sentiments on here in that it wouldn't be totally hassle free, think of all the bird droppings )
I can wistfully see the attraction somewhat, especially as my 'lawn' turns into a quagmire in winter so I quietly despair as my dogs run cheerfully past me, from charging about in the garden, all over my kitchen floor.

Poor blackbirds, though I presume people who would want a plastic lawn wouldn't want to encourage wildlife anyway.

[tom00_uk]

they are quite common outside the uk, and good for areas where to hot and dry for a "English bowling green" style lawn

[theresa dockery]

To me, fake lawns are just another step further along the whole patio/lawn continuum...

People want their gardens to be extensions of the interiors of their houses: fake lawn = outdoor carpet.

[Hedgehoggy]

Agreed our lawns would no longer need mowing, but ergo an electric garden vac would then be used far more frequently than a lawn mower would, coupled with the extra water usage for cleaning the synthetic lawn and no doubt tonnes of disinfectant to wash any fouled areas.

Watching the large flocks (c.50+) of starlings successfully probing my 100% organic lawn for leather jackets every spring is a sight to behold (not to mention the money I save as they’re not interested in my feeders during this glut!), and not forgetting the bumblebees feeding on the clover flowers, as well as the goldfinches feeding on the dandelion seeds -- none of this would be possible on a synthetic lawn. Nah, I’d rather tolerate the seas-of-mud for a few months of the year than have live in such a sterile environment.

[Gill Catton]

People spend so much money pulling the moss out of their lawn when It has always seemed to me that moss is an ideal replacement for grass if you don't want to be mowing all the time - probably better at retaining moisture and surviving drought too! I know that the areas of my parents lawn that are now mostly moss and red fescue need less mowing than the rest!