Turf’s Up. The trend for lawns privileging the artificial over the real deal.

A Guardian article available here, provided an overview of the developing trend towards replacing the real turf and grass configurations in their existing back and front gardens with artificial, synthetic turf options. What’s the impact of this choice made by Homeowners? How can this be avoided with the use of intelligent water management systems?

Deciding to use artificial, despite the wider range of options that can be recycled, are made from recycled plastic, still creates problems for permeability and biodiversity net gain. Depending on the scale of the change from real to artificial, we face a real possibility that ecosystems in areas will be fundamentally altered as access to the soil is blocked for insects and bugs and numbers of species at the bottom of our back-garden food chains begin to dwindle compounding the impact on our biodiversity across the county.

We also know that the surface temperature of these options are also far greater than gardens with real plant life and a biodiverse vegetation where evapotranspiration is enabled when the lawn is correctly irrigated.

Here at Polypipe we are committed to working with Homeowners who wish to enable long term green and blue infrastructure and capture the biodiversity and aesthetic benefits of their private green spaces. If we can enable private owners to keep their land permeable, natural and friendly to our natural flora and fauna, we are mitigating against the impact of development, one step at a time.

Picture Above: Permavoid sub-surface water management technologies can transform residential gardens, optimising the health, well-being and bio-diversity benefits of natural ecosystems.