Artificial lawns are higher maintenance than the adverts will have you believe … and they’ll burn your feet in this heatwave.
I count myself lucky having a very small garden in London. It won’t win any horticultural prizes and “No Mow May” is the perfect excuse for benign neglect. But it has grass, the shade of an old apple tree and a water feature, and, in this heatwave, it’s a sanctuary. Most people have the same instincts, heading for shaded parks. In heat like this, we all want grass and trees.
But I keep getting leaflets urging me to destroy my leafy garden and to landscape it with artificial grass, allegedly “almost maintenance free”. They show “gardens” with emerald-green plastic “lawns” surrounded by austere plant-free fencing. These lifeless green carpets are set off with paving stones and have concrete “planters”, bleak designs sending a message: no living creatures tolerated here.
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