faking it - artificial grass

Saw an article in the Torygraph on fake grass, quite tempted to get some for my back garden. My lawn is currently a mess of weeds and bare patches and I'm far to busy (lazy) to do anything about it. It's quite a small area (I'd guess about 2.5m x 5m) so I don't think it would cost too much.

Anyway, if you've got fake grass:

• how does it look / feel?
• does it require any maintenance?
• does it wear out over time?

don't bother with either - use it for something productive like veg or use shingle/pebbles etc and plant through with some low shrubs/grasses/succulents etc which requires minimal maintenance.

artifical grass looks naff compared to what I suggest 

I know a groundsman at a professional football club who has it in his garden, he admits to "can't be bothered" to cut his own grass when he looks after a stadium pitch and about 10 others at a training ground.  It looks alright but good ones are expensive.  The good news is that unless you expect to have teams running on it most days the maintenance should be minimal after it is laid and shouldn't wear out for 10s of years

If it looked ok, I'd go for it.  With a lawn you tend it all year round, then summer comes (if you're lucky) and you can't water it so within a week it looks a mess.  I would imagine that stuff that looks good though is pretty expensive though.

Tom77 - we got it about 6 years ago to address the prob of our dogs runing the lawn pi$$ing on it. It's quite expensive and time consuming to put down but is well worth it. It looks like normal grass. Most people can't believe it's fake and just think we're super obsessive about cutting our grass. Means you can ditch the lawn mower and say goodbye to wasting time mowing plus it sorted my hayfever out !  Weeds do grow through it but beyond that it's zero maintenance. Think we got ours delivered from a company called Evergreen in Leicestershire or somewhere

How does it feel though?  Is it scratchy to laze around on?  I like a nice soft lawn.  

Looks like decent stuff is about £25 per sq metre plus whatever it costs to have it installed. Going to get hold of a sample to see how it looks and feels.

Got Evergreens to send me some samples.

Looks very realistic, don't think you'd know it was fake unless you were right up close to it. It feels quite soft, not scratchy. Doesn't feel like grass - it feels warm to the touch.

Think I'm going to have my garden completely ripped up and redone. Artificial grass for the most part and probably some kind of gravel / stone chip round the outside with a few low-maintance plants.