Have you seen and do you like Astroturf yards?

My Uncle lives in Hendersen, Nevada (just outside of Las Vegas), and his backyard has an astroturf lawn. It looks alright from a distance, but you can really tell up close, and I’m not a huge fan. Then again, I’m not a huge fan of conventional lawns either. I think they’re boring, and a waste of water.

On the other hand, astroturf never needs mowing, watering, or any other kind of upkeep.

… like a front yard / back yard? I have never seen them before. The only Astroturf I have been around is the one from my high school. It’s a weird texture to stand on and I don’t really enjoy the way it looks. I much prefer grass.

To each his own. I would hate that, but it’s not my yard.

Never seen that in a personal yard and I can’t imagine it. If I lived in an area where a grass yard wouldn’t be practical or natural, I’d go for xeriscaping. When I’ve visited Arizona, I’ve always found the yards with native-plant landscaping to be so much more attractive than the desperately fake grassy ones. My feeling about landscaping in general is, if you’ve got to force something to grow in your area, it’s not going to look that great.

I really dislike astroturf. We had it on a deck when I was a kid and it looked terrible and felt horrible under your feet.

That’s incredibly silly, IMO. If you’re going to spend money to cover your yard, why not landscape with native plants? It will look much better, and require little to no maintenance.

I’ve only ever seen it used for all-weather sports pitches. I would hate it in a garden. Then again, it rains enough here that grass is always green anyway. It’s used for sports pitches here because grass ones get too muddy.