Campaigners call for artificial grass tax

SPG said:
The trick here is to forget about the lawn and encourage moss. I have the best moss in Derbyshire :) :) :)
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Pretty sure my 'lawn' can take that title ;) it's mostly moss and clover. If the aphids get on any plants I just leave them out near the lawn for a bit and the ladybirds that thrive in the moss take care of it.
 
Bug One said:
I'm sure it's not great for the environment. But it just seems massively insignificant. It's not like people are rolling over huge swathes of the country with the stuff. It's a few townies who can't be arsed or are incapable of maintaining a living outdoor space.
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Yet if everyone did the same it would be a massive problem. That's why people need educating about it - clearly everyone thinks it's ok. And the more people do it, the more people think it's ok and it'll be a snowball effect.

Journey said:
Artificial grass, just call it what it is, green coloured plastic laid on the ground.

Will be around in 5000 years, long after we've all died, along with any biodiversity we once had.
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Exactly.
 
dLockers said:
It is a worthy cause tbh. What is odd is how people need educating that outside shouldn't look like inside.
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That's a big part of the issue. People want a living room outside with everything neat and tidy and preened to perfection.... It's a garden, let it be a garden. If you don't want that, go buy a flat.

In extreme cases, plastic lawns can cause issues for transitory bugs. If a large proportion of housing estates switch to plastic, it effectively creates a sterile barrier between wild areas preventing bugs etc from moving between them.

But I guess in the Instagram generation, everything has to be pictures perfect to impress their friends
 
Its their Garden, they can do what they want, if they want it to look like its inside then let people at it.
 
I would like to get fake grass (the expensive good-looking stuff) for the front areas of the house for the following reasons:

I have a proper lawn in the backyard with various fruit trees, so lots of pollen for the beezies.
There are also bushes and flower beds at the front that would remain, only the grass would be replaced.
Newish estate built on clay and straight up rubble from the previous buildings that used to be here, lawns pretty ragged at the best of times.
Mowing the lawn and weeding is a mare, and I can't just do the wild-flower forest thing as we are contractually obligated in our estate to keep external lawn areas from being over-grown/messy.
There is a large, protected wooded area literally over the road from my house with loads of natural greenery.
 
It’s chavvy nastiness and goes with range rovers driven by middle aged angry blokes, kids called mason, Dillon, Harrison etc, ring doorbells, stupid platitudes like ‘home is where the love is’ plastered all over the house, children with under cuts and side partings, grey or white ‘everything, cheap corner sofas and matching tracksuits.
 
fastwunz said:
It’s chavvy nastiness and goes with range rovers driven by middle aged angry blokes, kids called mason, Dillon, Harrison etc, ring doorbells, stupid platitudes like ‘home is where the love is’ plastered all over the house, children with under cuts and side partings, grey or white ‘everything, cheap corner sofas and matching tracksuits.
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Accurate description of @chroniclard :cry:
 
krooton said:
I would like to get fake grass (the expensive good-looking stuff) for the front areas of the house for the following reasons:

I have a proper lawn in the backyard with various fruit trees, so lots of pollen for the beezies.
There are also bushes and flower beds at the front that would remain, only the grass would be replaced.
Newish estate built on clay and straight up rubble from the previous buildings that used to be here, lawns pretty ragged at the best of times.
Mowing the lawn and weeding is a mare, and I can't just do the wild-flower forest thing as we are contractually obligated in our estate to keep external lawn areas from being over-grown/messy.
There is a large, protected wooded area literally over the road from my house with loads of natural greenery.
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Mmm, new build estates with plastic front lawns, delightful.
 
As always when people get a bee in their bonnet, they consider one usage decision matrix as the be all and end all, and declare unilaterally that their opinion is the only possible one, and all others are wrong headed and should be punished. In this case, everyone seems to assume the choice is between a healthy verdant lawn, and a cheap roll of astroturf.

I conceded the arguments for why an artificial lawn isn't ideal. But I'd put forward the following for consideration and suggest it's not as simple as "It should be banned, think of the children!"

1) Due to the UK's obsession with 'neat' gardens, a lawn isn't all that great an ecological paradise anyway. What we all should be doing is sowing wildflowers and letting it grow much longer. Unless that's your approach, you're not quite the paragon of virtue you might be painting.

2) It's not always a choice between artificial and real lawn. I have two dogs and a child haring around. I persevered with an attempt at lawn for a long time, but my final choice was between bare mud and artificial grass. I'm not sure the amount of 'patch magic' I put down was any better for the environment than some plastic!

3) I keep hearing this stuff about how hot it gets and how dangerous it is. All I can tell you is that during pandemic we set our daughter up with a temperature gun and designed an experiment to keep her busy one hot day. It was significantly cooler than our patio stone, albeit warmer than bare soil in the flowerbeds. I probably still have the table she wrote up somewhere, but from memory the paving stone got up to 50C in direct sunlight, while the turf was in the 30s in direct sunlight. Maybe it depends on how good the product is, or what you've got under it?

For myself, the artificial lawn was the best choice. I'm happy in myself that the one-off ecological impact of it's creation is minor considering it's going to last 20+ years. It's surrounded by flowerbeds with bees and insects buzzing around them, and our front lawns are similarly kept to what I mentioned in point 1 (if, by wildflowers you mean moss, daisies, dandelions and clover. And if you ignore that the real reason I keep it long is because I'm a lazy sod. :D )

Just trying to add a bit of balance. :)
I'm sure many won't agree with the points I've tried to make - but that's life!
 
SPG said:
Its their Garden, they can do what they want, if they want it to look like its inside then let people at it.
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Land owners have a moral obligation to sustain local ecology best they can.

Sadly "It's mine, I don't care, i'll do what i like" is the main reason why we're seeing a huge fall in numbers of thousands of species of garden (and beyond) wildlife.
 
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Yaayuh! said:
Land owners have a moral obligation to sustain local ecology best they can.

Sadly "It's mine, I don't care, i'll do what i like" is the main reason why we're seeing a huge fall in numbers of thousands of species of garden (and beyond) wildlife
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No they don`t. They have zero obligation to anything at all. try telling the people that live in a terrace with a 8m2 back garden that gets about as much light as under the stairs in winter time.
 
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