How long will it take?

If you want a low-maintenance lawn, then adjust your aspirations.

You can cut down mowing to once a fortnight in summer, but the green sward won’t be as dense as it will if you mow weekly. Leaving the clippings on the lawn will reduce labour too, but it doesn’t look good and you’ll like as not get it in the neck when you traipse the stuff indoors. Settle for wide pathways mown through longer grass if you want to split the difference, or reduce the size of your lawn and increase that of your beds and borders. Time spent on a lawn is repaid, I reckon, by the pleasure you’ll get from looking at it and the sustenance it provides to wildlife. Astroturf? On a balcony maybe, but it is plastic and does nothing for the environment.