Alternative to grass?

[gti tim]

The garden at our place is tiny, but big enough for the little one to have all his toys in. At the moment the garden is gravelled, which is great low maintenance, but not so great for little one to run and fall on.

I used to have it grassed, but it's not a sunny garden, and so was patchy. i have been thinking of turfing it to make it more child-friendly. However, i thought of astroturf, or something similar which looks reasonable and is child friendly. Any suggestions?

[Zippee]

Giver Pher timmybob a shout. He's just had his garden astroturfed and spent ages looking at samples before choosing. It looks really good and is nice and soft to walk on.

[robinhood21]

Clover can look nice. Clicky

[count duckula]

We astro turfed our garden, we got it supplied by a company called "as good as grass", the product is ace, the company itself if shocking, missed deliveries, wrong product sent etc.
The astro is fab, it does not look like grass and has a shiny finish, but it dries really quickly, you do not get muddy feet etc. We are not keen gardeners so it suited us fine, not cheap though.

Malc

[bazking69]

There was a stand up at my local shopping centre a while back selling 'fake turf'. It looked very very good and even felt very similar to real turf. Not cheap, but ideal for small zero maintainance areas.

[shirt]

count duckula said:

We astro turfed our garden, we got it supplied by a company called "as good as grass", the product is ace, the company itself if shocking, missed deliveries, wrong product sent etc.
The astro is fab, it does not look like grass and has a shiny finish, but it dries really quickly, you do not get muddy feet etc. We are not keen gardeners so it suited us fine, not cheap though.
Malc

would you mind revealing roughly how much it costs per sq.m? is it possible to lay it yourself? what sort of backing does it have - i.e. is it a decent weed barrier?

sounds ideal for what i need if its not stupidly expensive.