What's wrong with a bit of fakery?

Now we are coming to the end of the year I spend lots of time reflecting on what we have done over the past year. We always set little or big targets at the beginning of the year outlining what we would like to achieve in the house. This year has been a big and very busy year.

Our main project this year was to do our driveway, it was just a single tarmacked driveway with a falling down wall at the side. We wanted to create a double block paved driveway with a smart new wall at the side and we wanted to do it ourselves - mainly to save costs. We dug it out, packed it up and block paved it and built a new wall. It looks great!

During all this we used some of the mud from the driveway to level out our back garden and the rest just got dumped on the front garden. Both garden ended up being such a mess but we had a lovely driveway!

When we finally got round to doing the back garden we wanted fuss free and as low maintenance as possible, so we decided on just a plain lawn, we cut every bush shrub and tree out! We really wanted artificial grass, we looked online and in many stores. Its as low maintenance as you could get! But at the time we really couldn't afford it so we just turfed it. This is what it looks like now:

It needs mowing regularly and strimming just as often, admittedly it doesn't take forever but who wants to spend time mowing? Can you notice the worn grass patches already in the right hand corner, its worn down so quickly.

As for the front garden we never got round to doing that before the winter set in. Its larger than the back garden and it seems to get over grown more than the back aswell. The grass doesn't grow the same, it all different kinds of grass and green weeds. I think it really lets the front of our house down especially with the new drive. 

In the spring I would really like to invest in the artificial grass. I just feel we have invested so much of our time and money in the drive and I don't want to be gardening every weekend for the rest of my life! And we need something to keep up appearances. Artificial grass is such low maintenance we wouldn't have to bother getting the mower out, watering it in the summer, or worry about weeds and the kids ruining it.

Now a days you can hardly tell the difference between the two either. Take these two lawns for instance – can you honestly identify which one is real and which one is fake…and trust me, one of them is:

Photo: Hi-techturf / Couch Grass Suppliers

Come on you can't even tell the difference! The only thing is if we had real grass it would NEVER stay green!

I am completely sold on artificial grass and I can't wait to start looking into it again for next year!

What are your thoughts and has anybody else already got it?