Grass, my a*se

I gotta grouse about grass. Not the variety beloved of Rastas, nor the kind that gets you ‘iced’ in 1970s cop dramas, but the artificial sort. I’ve noticed two front gardens in my tiny village grubbing up the real thing and laying this lifeless outdoor carpeting instead. (Not to be nasty, but the two householders in question are both middle-aged and overweight - exactly the sort who’d benefit from marching up and down behind the mower once a fortnight. Just saying…) - but it’s not the adverse effect on their waistlines that exercises my irritation; it’s what it’s doing to all of us, insidiously.

Now, I don’t have the perfect lawn by any means, and I’m delighted about that. It’s full of weeds and wildflowers, bugs and grubs - and that’s the point. The tragedy about proponents of hideous artificial grass is that they clearly care not a jot for nature. Anyone who’s ever sat silent and motionless, feet from a mother bird harvesting beakfuls of plentiful insects directly from the lawn at her feet to shove into the vocal chops of the fat baby hopping two inches behind her, would never dream of replacing that teeming organ of biodiversity with some synthetic fibre matting factory-made in Ding-Dong, Ping-Pong, or wherever all our stuff comes from these days.

Do you want your garden to be a thriving little ecosystem, rich in tooth and claw - good for you and for our planet - or a branch of CarpetRight?