Lawns- why??

[Chez2 10]

8 hours ago, lil-minx92 said:

I think youve hit the nail on the head.  

then why not have the garden fairly heavily planted so it doesn't take much work? If you have the right balance of shrubs, hardy perennials and bulbs planted close together with a heavy mulch it won't take much work. It will take a lot less work than a lawn does.  I did this at my third house on heavy clay. It worked too well and I was bored with not have anything to 'garden' ie potter about with so I had to keep digging more of the grass up until we ended up with an almond shaped sliver of lawn running diagonally through the garden.  Lawns are really hard work. 

[Cyclone 10]

Lawn isn't just cheaper, it looks more pleasant than decking or concrete.

[willman 10]

You can't play football or quoits on decking properly - whilst making memories with the grandkids. 

We could never keep a lawn due to 5 dogs and an undulating landscape so we hard landscaped it for 20 years.

We're now using fake lawn which achieves everything a lawn could, but i would rather have a nice soft patch of grass to wriggle my toes in whilst reading a book in the deck chair.

[Cyclone 10]

Yeah, agreed.  Real grass feels nicer underfoot.

My parents dog actually likes the section of fake lawn, it's a bit scratchy I guess as he goes there to roll around.

[Chez2 10]

On 05/03/2019 at 11:00, willman said:

You can't play football or quoits on decking properly - whilst making memories with the grandkids. 

We could never keep a lawn due to 5 dogs and an undulating landscape so we hard landscaped it for 20 years.

We're now using fake lawn which achieves everything a lawn could, but i would rather have a nice soft patch of grass to wriggle my toes in whilst reading a book in the deck chair.

It depends what the kids play. The only youngsters in our family at the moment are my nephew and niece. They would rather play on our drive on their bikes or other toys rather than on the grass. We had three large dogs and our lawn isn't perfect but I wouldn't have fake grass. It still needs washing and disinfecting if dogs have been on it whereas you can just water scorch marks on the lawn. It would be a nightmare trying to get the leaves off our lawn if it was fake grass. 

 

Having said that, we still keep a decent percentage of our garden as grass but its not all bare lawn. One lawn is planted with fruit trees and a pergola with climbing plants. We don't use the lawn though, we use the patios or the gravelled areas. 

[willman 10]

tbh the fake grass is amazing it sweeps with a brush and fortunately for us our 3 boxers don't do anything in the garden at all. It has some benefits but tbh i didn't want it at first.

The kids love rolling on it,the dogs love it and its green all year, but it's each to their own.

Some of it is crap and none is as good as a nice lawn.

 

 

[Chez2 10]

Its interesting your dogs don't urinate on the lawn. We have a friend who installed fake grass as he has two dogs but they do urinate on the 'lawn' and he's having trouble with the smell. His lawn was in bad shape before but he didn't have a problem with the smell.