Before our time, the Great Aussie Backyard looked something like this photo taken in the early 1970s in suburban Perth. A huge expanse of lawn (often spiky buffalo), a concrete path and a Hills Hoist. Litres of water were poured onto the lawn via sprinklers, with the water sometimes originating from a bore in your own backyard. A hose could be used to water the lawn, wash the car, clean out the rubbish bins (as above), water the pot plants and cool off hot children.
With the tragic events of the past weeks, I think most of the world is now aware that parts of Australia are in severe drought (and have been for some time). With this drought comes stringent water restrictions which completely prohibit the watering of lawns in any way, shape or form.
So, most lawns around here now look like this:
But not the lawn in my new backyard (we moved house last week). It is lush and green. It has no dead patches. It provides an even texture with little maintenance.
Because it's fake.
At first I was appalled by the idea of having a synthetic back lawn. It seemed almost un-Australian. But I have to say, after living with it for a week or so, it's growing on me. (Not literally, obviously.)
There are distinct advantages of an artificial lawn - it requires no watering, or fertilising. It doesn't need to be mowed. It lasts up to 20 years without fading, and it always looks green.
After putting up with dustbowls for playgrounds for the past few years, many of the schools around our area are also turfing their outdoor areas with synthetic lawn. The children's clothing stays cleaner, they have a soft, 'green' surface to play on and the overall appearance of the school is improved.
A new house in our neighbourhood has gone one step further than just artificially turfing their own front/backyard, they have also done the 'nature strip' (the piece of ground in front of each house between the street and the footpath/pavement/sidewalk). As you look along the street it is brown, dead, crunchy, patchy, lush green, brown, dead, crunchy... Could this be the end of the nature strip as we know it? Soon to be the un-nature strip?
In places where you are permitted to water lawns, it is estimated up to 80 percent of a household's water use will go onto a lawn. Replacing dead, brown lawns and dusty ovals with synthetic turf seems like a simple solution to the watering issue, when we don't have the water to use. However like all things in life, nothing is simple. In researching this post, I discovered the down-side to the artificial acres of verdant lushness.
Synthetic turf is, quite obviously a man-made product, made of polyethylene or a combination of polyethylene and nylon, sewn into a rubberized plastic mat or a netted backing. So, in manufacturing the turf, carbon emissions are created. And then, the artificial lawn itself replaces a living (sometimes), breathing real lawn, which in normal circumstances would be sequestering carbon and producing oxygen.
In order to make the individual blades of synthetic grass stand up, the lawn is in-filled with granules of a variety of substances (sometimes granulated rubber) and there are concerns about whether toxic substances leach out of these granules and into the ground water.
This article at the Sustainable Gardening Australia website contains an excellent summary of the points for and against real
and fake lawns. Who knew grass could have so many issues?
Where do you stand on the lawn? Real or fake?
* You wouldn't really vacuum an artificial lawn - you need to sweep it. But 'Trading the Victa for a Broom' just didn't have the same ring to it.
14 comments:
Hmmm - this is tricky...
My initial instinct is to be in favour - they are kind of attractive in our dustbowl country..
However I have seen how quickly grass comes back after some rain ..
and surely surely Victoria is due some decent rains.
As I write this bad fires are threatening the state again.
After struggling to maintain the tiny patch of green that our local inner-city primary school calls an oval the P&C installed fake lawn two years ago.
Before that the lawn area was nearly always out of bounds because it was a sludgy mud pile or because new turf at great expense had just been planted.
Installing fake turf has revolutionised our tiny playground and provided much needed elbow room for our kids.
This did not happen easily. The arguments were many and passionate for and against. Now, we couldn't imagine the area any other way.
As for the home, coastal Sydney gets plenty of rain and we haven't watered our lawns or gardens for three years and have lush verdant greenery. Unfair to our southern neighbours I know.
As much as I sympathise with Melbourne's drought I just can't get my head around a fake turf nature strip - I'd prefer a rock garden like they have in the very dry North West of Oz.
I want better schemes for recycled water so that we can have our parks again. And many councils are working on this. Our creche discussed getting fake grass and the verdict came down against, mostly because creches also have sandpits and it's a pain to get the sand out of the faux-lawn. I like real plants every time. Man it's depressing being in a drought. Our local park is exactly as you said: a dustbowl.
We have a lot of dust, but I'd rather replace it with real plants that live without lots of watering than a fake lawn. But then, I'm not focussed on backyard lawns for kids to play on. I'm kinda ok with the grubby clothes, and I live in an area where playing cricket and footy in the driveway or the street is ok.
I'm all in favour of fake grass for school grounds though, I remember the dustbowl to mudpatch from my own school years.
The marketers around here for the fake lawn focus on the use of recycled materials; it sounded good to me... ...except the part about potential leeching, which I only just learned from you. So, I was totally in favor of the fake lawn, and every now and then think of it, as our 'lawn' is either a mud-slop or a crispy dry patch. If it IS green, it's just teasing, and still a mud slop just beneath the surface, so the kids can't really play outside without a colossal mess (fine for them, not for me, the cleaner). Also, if we had artificial turf, Gadget could have a putting green, and he'd LOVE that. Artificial is SO expensive, though.
Well, this post has made me more aware of something I may not have otherwise known. It just made me more aware of how the environment may suffer because of what is more convenient or easy for us. Perhaps someone will come up with the perfect product over all. It sounds so good I wish we all had it, but then the other issues...not sure about it.
Great post!
I would have automatically thought that real was better than fake, but you have raised some interesting pro/con points. I too, almost always prefer real. There is nothing quite as wonderful as cool grass between one's toes.
Well, I strongly side on the 'no' camp, even in schools (including where I teach), Stats on breakages and tissue damage are higher on fake grass and so called 'softfall' than they are on real grass, sand and bark. My yard can be dusty, it grows when it rains - and mother nature provided both the grass and the rain. She did not supply that nasty plastic stuff. ergh.
They had it at the nice private kinder we were at last year, and I loved how lush and green it was there, and how the kid's clothes came home clean :)
Now we are at the public kinder ( lesser fees but compulsory working bees - ugh ! ) and it is a dustbowl !!
For me personally though, it's grass every time. Ours is doing fine on bio-degradable soap suds I recycle from the washing machine .. and as someone else said, it does come back pretty quickly when it rains.
Funny I read this post today. I like to walk everywhere when I can ( and I don't have a car ), and so therefore, I try and take different paths to keep interest keen.
Today I walked past an old person's flat where they had laid down BILLIARD FELT on the front lawn and OMG - how horrible ( and weird/wrong !! )
They would have been better off painting the concrete green.
xx
I always write the longest comments here !!
The south of England was a dustbowl in the seventies. Water is continuously running down the mountain sides where we are now. Having experience of both extremes, I would go for artificial for heavy wear areas especially where children play. Extra carbon generated may be offset by not having to use power to cut it (I doubt such areas would use push-pull machines) and some extra cost may be offset by not having to maintain it by way of machines, wages, weed-killer, fertiliser, etc..
The south of England was a dustbowl in the seventies. Water is continuously running down the mountain sides where we are now. Having experience of both extremes, I would go for artificial for heavy wear areas especially where children play. Extra carbon generated may be offset by not having to use power to cut it (I doubt such areas would use push-pull machines) and some extra cost may be offset by not having to maintain it by way of machines, wages, weed-killer, fertiliser, etc..
Billiard felt? Too weird.
I was always against fake grass. Much of my childhood was spent on fake grass tennis courts and burns that one gets if you fall on them are horrible.
Apparently fake grass has improved as the one recently laid down at the boys' school is much lusher and softer than that I remember.
I've seen a few fake grass gardens around our neighbourhood and although its good in theory, I don't know if I could do it myself.
I wanted to know more about fake grass - thanks!
I think a combination would be ideal. I could live with a fake front lawn and a real back lawn...
Post a Comment