Sorry, bees, but plastic grass is just fantastic
Earlier this week, we were asked not to furnish our bird tables with all-youcan-eat buffets as this can spread disease.
Now we have been asked to abandon our bowling-green lawns because bees prefer longer grass. And as bees are in decline, it is surely an act of gross moral turpitude to knowingly destroy their sward – even if you do want to play a Grand Slam.
Now that gardening is beset with such moral dilemmas, I am very glad I took drastic action in 2012 and installed an artificial lawn.
Don’t you dare call it Astroturf. And it’s certainly not fake. Well, it is fake, but not glaringly so.
It’s Easigrass, the posh stuff they use at the Chelsea Flower Show and, by a country mile, the best horticultural decision I have ever made.
My garden is overlooked by two 80ft trees, which rob it of water and sunlight. After years pumping all sorts of
chemicals on to what could best be described as an unfortunate Brazilian strip of grass, surrounded by bare naked earth, I now have a lovely vista of green all year round. But it’s not a barren wasteland. Why, in the rain, worms come up through it. The occasional dandelion has been known to take root and struggle through as well.
More importantly, my all-weather lawn never gets waterlogged or muddy, so the family and I spend far more time outside than we used to because there’s no claggy soil on wellies, no dirty footprints in the kitchen.
With spring almost upon us, the frogs have arrived in our pond to make whoopee and the water is dense with gleaming dollops of spawn.
Before school, the children go outside to check the progress in their slippers. Come home time, when the kids next door daren’t venture out for a kickabout until the grass has recovered from winter, my lawn is open all hours, 365 days a year.
It may not be authentic – especially not for the bees, who love a nice clump of clover, but by way of restitution I have crammed lots of alternatives into the herbaceous border
– but for our urban needs plastic is just fantastic.