You’d better believe it! This week has seen our garden transformed from a lush expanse of weeds and wild poppies to a beautifully groomed lawn of artificial grass. They’ll all say we’re crazy, but take one look at our beautiful lawn and you might just be converted!

Here’s a photograph of our lawn before the makeover. At the back you can see the decking I’ve talked about before and at the front you can see our 1st floor balcony.

We wanted grass for the main area of our garden, but really didn’t want the hassle of mowing it every week in the summer and then watching it get longer and longer through the winter months. We could have gravelled the area or covered it in concrete, but that would have been ugly and caused nasty grazed knees during summer games of outdoor Twister. So artificial grass was the natural unnatural solution! It looks like normal grass, yet it never needs mowing and it retains its lushness all year round come flood or drought.

The installation team started by ripping up all the weeds and levelling the garden surface. They then installed a wooden framework around the edges, before filling it in with a ton and a half of sharp sand. After levelling the sand and packing it tightly with one of those fun-looking vibrating-metal-plate-thingy machines they laid a weed-suppressing membrane. Then it was time to bring-on the grass, which came in a couple of carpet rolls ready to lay out on the ground. It was secured to the edges of the wooden frame with nails that are invisible beneath the lush synthetic blades of grass. Joins in the grass were made with a special glue, with the final tight fitting achieved by using a carpet-fitter’s knee kicker. It was a really interesting process to watch, and took just over a day for the garden and the balcony (which was simply glued to the metal floor).

We are absolutely delighted with the results, which you can see here:

The company we used were As Good As Grass. I haven’t linked their name (although you can find their website easily through your favourite search engine) because I’m still undecided as to whether I would actually recommend them. While the two installation guys have done a terrific job, the whole process of placing the order was tortuous due to the poor communications and slow response time of their sales team. It took over 2 weeks and many e-mails and phone calls before I even got the initial quote out of them, and even after the installation was booked in it was cancelled with only a couple of days’ notice. To their credit the sales team were always very friendly on the phone, but they just never did what they promised to do. Reading between the lines I am guessing that they are horrendously overworked and understaffed. Anyhow, many other companies are available who provide the same service, so I would recommend searching for artificial grass and see what you find.

As well as the grass, we have had our loft fully boarded this week and the downstairs carpet replaced. You might be thinking that I am a little lazy for not boarding the loft myself, but having seen two highly skilled carpenters take 3 days to do the job properly I’m glad that I took the easier route!