When we moved into our house 4 years ago we knew there was a lot we wanted to do to it. We started with simple decorating tasks so that our bedrooms and the lounge were the way we wanted them to be, so it felt like our home and not somebody else’s. Then we fitted a new downstairs bathroom and the jobs got bigger from there with a whole new en-suite being added and finally knocking down walls and building a new kitchen-dinning room, which I still absolutely love. So far we have spent all our time focused on the inside and we have certainly completed the majority of the jobs we wanted to (excluding the main bathroom and a dodgy looking hallway) but now we need to start focusing on the outside, hopefully in time for summer.
In comparison to the house our back garden is on the small side, with a lower level flagged section, a raised grass area and further raised flagged area at the back, that currently houses the trampoline (just). With two growing boys and a puppy the back garden needs to be practical. I want them to be able to move around freely and play ball without fear of them killing all my flowers and I want to be able to let Buddy out without him eating all the grass and digging for goodness knows what. However, I still want it to be a nice space for me and Billy too, somewhere we can sit out and enjoy the sun and have friends round in the summer months. At the moment the grass is sporadic with patches of mud and random divots caused by Buddy and lacks the lovely relaxing feel I want to achieve from my garden, plus we need to think about buying new fences too.
We have had many a discussion about what to do with the garden from a complete over haul to just making minor changes, I like the green of the grass and the colours of the flowers so flagging the whole lot is a big no no for me, yet grass isn’t always that practical and can, evidently, be ruined pretty quickly so I’m really drawn to the idea of artificial grass. Have you seen it? There seems to be lots of benefits to this approach.
When people first started installing this years ago I wasn’t a fan. It looked so fake, a bit like a green carpet in the garden but it had some along way since then. You can even choose different styles with some looking more like individual blades of grass and others giving a more all over grass effect. Personally I like the ones that look like blades of grass, I feel they look more authentic and I think they will feel nicer when you walk on them.
The artificial grass not only looks like grass but it requires non of the up keep, no watering, no mowing, no weeding. It wont get muddy and Buddy wont be able to dig holes all over it. It sounds like the perfect solution, especially as we could do the perfect square in he middle where are rather questionable lawn is currently and then dig up the flower beds along the side and replace them with rose bushes, something that will be colourful but easy to maintain along side the new grass. Hopefully we can also get rid of the trampoline this year and replace it with a lovely set of garden furniture but I’m not sure the boys will go for that idea.
Fingers crossed we get this all done in time for summer, preferably summer this year!
(This post was written in collaboration with Grass Direct).