The Trials and Tribulations of ... Grass.

So Justin and I have not had much luck with our grass in our back yard. When I say back yard, I don’t mean sprawling acres… I mean 160 square feet. It can’t be that hard to keep a small patch of grass alive, right? Wrong. Although my husband is a landscape architect, (which I thought plants should be second nature) Justin admitted that grass was not his specialty. To his credit, he can save plants that I had deemed dead and wanted to throw away.

So let me explain. Our first spring, we had thick plentiful grass. It took a little while, but the grass seed turned into grass and we were happy. Then like clockwork, June turned into July and it became blazing fire hot outside, and our grass was reduced to ash and weeds. Yes, ash.

Our second spring we decided to go the sod route. Justin’s dad came down and the boys spent 5+ hours working hard to make our back yard look less like a pig pen (it had been reduced to thick mud) and more like a green beauty. It was successful!! Until two weeks later. Apparently female dog urine burns the grass. She would go in the same spots – which didn’t bother us too much. We could deal with it. What we had problems with was the mowing.

When you have only a 160 square foot back yard, the HOA pays to have a landscaping company come mow it/cut it. We had some issues with over cutting and had gotten into a habit of locking our gate so we could cut our own grass. Their motto: If we cut it super short we can get paid the same amount but come a lot less. One day I forgot to lock and we went on vacation. In a matter of three days, our grass was cut to ¼ of a centimeter in length and it died. Sad times for us.

So now we are brainstorming. We do have dogs and have had issues with burning. We need something tough that can handle anything and everything. So what have we come up with? Fake grass!

After having a few family suggestions, we have started looking into synthetic grass. Our initial talks with Southwest Greens Nashville have been great! They have special grass called “Envy Lawn Pet Turf.” Super durable and drainable, this type of “grass” prides itself with being dirt free and that puppy loving insects can’t thrive in it! The grass comes in various styles such as: Bluegrass, Ryle, Fescue, Blends, Centipede, and Zoysia.




There are also several “green” benefits of this fake grass – which the hubby loves! Top reason – conservation of water. Without living grass, we wouldn’t need to use thousands of gallons of water in an attempt to save our faltering grass. We also wouldn’t have to use fertilizers or pesticides … and we wouldn’t need to use gas to cut the grass or have the emissions from the leaf blower and grass cutters. Additional benefits? We’ll save money on the endless amount of seed/sod/and everything else we have bought in attempt to have our green beauty outside. Goodness!

The company’s representative is coming to the house to meet with us tomorrow and I will let you know how it goes. Maybe we will have a forever green grass after this! Yippee!

(Description of the layers the company will prepare, in addition to the layer of grass)



(Pictures of Synthetic Grass)