Benefits of Synthetic Turf

Introduction

Regular lawn grass looks nice and green, smells amazing in the summer morning, and creates an oxygen-rich environment in your yard. However, they are not good for the environment since they are incredibly resource-hungry. You often need to search for “landscape companies near me” and hire professionals just to get some work done on that grass. Fortunately, artificial lawns exist as a viable replacement. Let’s check out the benefits of synthetic turf.

The Benefits

  1. Water – Water is one of the major reasons why regular lawns are growing out of popularity. With automatic sprinklers and a steady water bill, you may not realize how big, or a water hog your lawn is. Lawn grass is actually the most irrigated crop in the US. That means all the lawn grass in the US consumes more water than commercial crops like wheat, corn, and fruit orchards combined.

A NASA study shows that lawn grass alone covers over 60,000 square miles of ground in the US. That’s 2 percent of US land. This makes lawn grass look especially bad as the water crisis throughout the western and southern regions of the US gets worse. On the other hand, synthetic turf does not require any water to stay green and “alive”. You just need to sprinkle a bit of water on the turf if you play with your pets. Just the savings on the water bill will pay for your brand-new synthetic turf within a few years.

  1. Pests and weeds – Even if you’ve been among the lucky few homeowners who have never dealt with weeds on their lawn, you must have come across commercials advertising products to kill those pests and weeds from your yard. Apart from being naturally prone to weed growth as any other plant, natural grass is especially more vulnerable to its monoculture. You’re growing the same grass as your neighbor, the entire neighborhood, and probably the entire suburb.

So, if a pest gets to infect your neighbor’s lawn, it’s easy for that disease to spread throughout the neighborhood and destroy your turf within days. Artificial grass doesn’t suffer from this problem. There are no pests that can feed on artificial grass. Moreover, before artificial grass is installed, a weed-proof foundation is laid out to prevent weed growth. The job of that foundation is to deny soil for weeds to grow on. Since there is no real soil under the synthetic turf, there are no critters that can thrive on it either. 

  1. Fertilizers and pesticides – Your lawn should be a safe sanctuary for you and your family. When you grow natural grass in your yard, a big part of maintenance is putting in a lot of chemicals. Those monoculture lawn grass seeds need a lot of fertilizer to grow tall and green and since they are vulnerable to pests and weeds, you also end up spraying a lot of pesticides and herbicides on your lawn.

All those artificial fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides contain highly toxic chemicals that are very harmful to you, your kids, and your pets. Ingesting or breathing in even a small amount over a long period can cause some serious problems. That’s not all. When it rains, all those toxic chemicals are washed away and into the local water bodies and stress out the local water systems.

With synthetic turf, there are no such problems. Artificial turf stays the way it is without any fertilizers or pesticides. There are no weeds and pests and that means you don’t need to spray those awful pesticides and herbicides. They don’t require nitrogen and phosphorus to grow either and that means there’s no need for fertilizers. You’ll save a lot of money just by eliminating the cost of these chemicals.

  1. Puddles and mud – Even as the water crisis gets worse and the landscape becomes more arid, your natural lawn may develop mud puddles due to rain or the sprinkler system. If you’ve got kids or dogs playing on the lawn, they will track a lot of that mud into your home. It’s adorable the first few times this happens. However, it becomes a headache very quickly.

Synthetic turf is laid over several sublayers with the soil deep beneath. It’s done to keep the turf stable and strong for a long period of time. Since there is no soil for water to turn into mud, you never have that problem. In the worst-case scenario, the lawn may be a bit dusty due to the wind blowing in dust from the surrounding areas. That can be easily washed away without the fear of mud puddles.

  1. Maintenance – The savings don’t end at the water bill and fertilizer or pesticide cost. You also save a lot of money on maintenance when you get synthetic turf. As mentioned above synthetic turf is plastic that’s manufactured to look like real grass without any of its characteristics. That means it stays green without consuming any resources and doesn’t grow. Since the grass doesn’t grow, it doesn’t need to be cut down.

When there’s nothing to cut down, you save a lot of money by not owning a lawn mower and not spending money each year on mower maintenance. Moreover, an artificial lawn doesn’t develop any bald patches and doesn’t die out on you. There’s no need to seed the lawn occasionally to keep it uniform and beautiful.

You also save a lot of time that would be spent during the weekend on lawn maintenance. You spend even more time during the change of seasons as you need to transition from a cool season grass to warm season grass and vice versa. All that time can be put to good use when you install synthetic turf.

Conclusion

While synthetic turfs aren’t perfect, they solve a lot of problems bright by natural grass. If you’re not into xeriscaping or other forms of sustainable landscape design, you can always choose synthetic turf for your yard. You can search for “landscape companies near me” and get pros to install a new synthetic turf on your property.

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