Many people are considering the switch to artificial grass having seen the natural look and feel of modern varieties. While our lives seem to get busier, an artificial lawn seems like an attractive option for people looking for a neat and stylish garden without the mowing and maintenance associated with having a beautiful grass lawn.
So, if you’re considering artificial turf, let us fill you in on why it might be right for you and your lifestyle.
Lush Lawns Year-Round
One of the main benefits of an artificial lawn has got to be that it looks perfectly green all year round. No summer droughts will spoil it and rain won’t turn it into a muddy mess. The varieties available now strive for a very realistic and soft look. Created with yarns in different shades of green and small amounts of browns and yellows as you might find in a grass lawn. It won’t get patchy from pet urine and will be harder wearing in places where there is high footfall.
Real Grass Lawns are High Maintenance
Keeping anything looking good requires some maintenance, but when compared with a grass lawn, artificial turf will never require as much care. If you’ve ever had a grass lawn, you’ll know that getting it laid in the right season is important and to keep it in top condition you will need to feed it regularly as well as mowing and edging it frequently. If problems develop, you’ll need to find out what’s causing it and treat accordingly which can take up a lot of time and effort.
With an artificial lawn, most of the skill in keeping it looking good is to do with choosing the right lawn for your needs and getting a good finish from the start. The better your initial installation, the better it will look and the easier it will be to care for. Just a quick wash and brush every now and then should suffice. If you have pets, simply remove any debris and wash the area down with a hose.
Lower Overall Costs for an Artificial Lawn
Usually the cost of laying an artificial lawn will be higher than laying a new grass lawn, but once it’s done, you won’t need to spend as much throughout its lifetime. Watering a grass lawn alone can cost a good deal of money, but dressing it and feeding it, mowing and edging all cost time and money. With an artificial lawn, you could buy a specialist rake that gets the leaves and debris up, or a specific cleaning product , but the lawn will stay green and neat even if you use a bush and a regular household detergent to clean it.
If you don’t have the tools for a real lawn already, you could find yourself forking out hundreds of pounds on mowers, feeds, weedkiller and strimmers that you simply won’t need with an artificial lawn.
Artificial lawns are also a strong contender to hard landscaping options like patios and decorative aggregates, like stones, which cost significantly more to lay. Artificial grass is supple for pets and children and breaks up your landscape design for a softer, more relaxed feel without the hassle of frequent lawn care.
Artificial Turf is Hard Wearing
Modern artificial lawns are both tough and soft. For areas where you walk frequently or even where vehicles catch corners of your lawn they will usually fare much better than grass, which can wear away and leave patches of bare earth.
Modern varieties of artificial turf are so realistic and hard wearing that even the Royal Horticultural Society has been known to use artificial turf in areas with high footfall to preserve the look of grassed areas that were looking tatty.
If you want to use it near children’s play equipment such as swings and sandpits, not only will it not go bare where the children regularly play, it is soft enough for rolling around on and can even have soft impact mats placed beneath it for extra cushioning.
Is Artificial Turf for me?
If your garden is small, you might be looking for ideas to brighten up your outdoor space without the need to buy a mower and all the maintenance equipment for a small area. Your garden might also be in shade often, making a real lawn a difficult option.
Similarly, you might not be able to maintain it yourself because you rent the property out or are physically unable to maintain a lawn, but would still enjoy the soft feel that the grass brings to your landscaping.
In any of these cases, artificial lawns are a fantastic option combining both value and beauty, but artificial turf is now so sophisticated, you may just want to enjoy it for its aesthetic appeal in large areas that would previously have been laid to lawn.
If you’re still unsure, take a look through some of the installations we’ve done for customers to give you an idea of what can be achieved and don’t hesitate to get in touch to request samples of any of our soft and tough artificial lawn options.