Turfing for a garden on a commercial or residential property has a surprisingly large number of options that differ in substantial ways across a number of important areas, such as its appearance and the maintenance that it requires. There are hundreds of different grass varieties that are often found in lawns, and each grass variety has its own features that distinguish it from other varieties, both from an appearance standpoint, and in terms of how to best care for your grass, so which variety you get can have an impact on both your time and how much enjoyment you get from your lawn.
For the first type of turf we will discuss, let’s get fake, or synthetic, grass out of the way first. This type of turf is something that you can get around the world as a replacement for real grass that looks very similar to real grass, so long as it doesn’t undergo a close examination. There are a number of advantages to it, such as in arid locations like California, where its usage has seen massive growth in recent years as the area attempts to deal with a draught. It also means that maintenance is massively reduced, not requiring cutting, and being largely impervious to weeds. One of the key downside to its usage is that it is made from polyethylene materials, generally seen as a single use plastic, and is also a class of plastic for which there is a growing body of evidence of supposed risks to human health and the environment. A lawn is also a living, breathing ecosystem that helps to maintain and sustain insect, rodent and birdlife. The only real argument in favour of its usage is the reduced maintenance cost and the ability to use it as a solution for having a green lawn when hose-pipe bans are in place.
When it comes to actual grass, there are significant number of turfing options available to you, although there is some variation in price. Typically speaking, faster growing grasses tend to be cheaper, however as a consequence the turf is likely to require greater maintenance, both with more regular mowing, and with increased demands for water and nutrients, which may mean that the long term cost of this turf is actually more significant. Alternatively, you can use turf made from grasses and alternatives that have a longer growth cycle, requiring less maintenance, at least in terms of mowing, and may turn out cheaper in the long run as a consequence.
With slower growth turf options, you often get the best options. You can also branch out from having a purely grass based lawn, implementing a greater variety of plants that are well suited to a field type ecosystem, such as various types of mosses and lichens, or even wild flowers. The latter has been growing increasingly popular, and there is a wide range of wild-flowering plants that have a sufficiently small profile to be well suited for a field, as well as being hardy enough to endure the occasional mow. There is also significant evidence that a more widespread implementation of such a turfing solution would be very beneficial to the environment in general as well. This is because a greater biodiversity of flora can also help to support a greater biodiversity of insects, in particular bees and other pollinators. Greater biodiversity also makes the ecosystem better able to conduct a robust defence against diseases that have been known to wipe out monocultures in the past.
