You are here: Home / Archives for 2012

Why We Believe in Synthetic Grass: The Advantages of Synthetic Grass over Natural Grass

At Green Planet Grass, we are serious about what we do. We are in the business of supplying synthetic grass because we fully believe that it is the best solution for everything from residential lawns to tennis courts.  We thought it might be helpful to list some of the advantages of synthetic grass lawns over natural grass.

First of all, synthetic grass is low maintenance. You really don’t have to do much of anything to it to keep it looking great. For homeowners, it’s one less task a week to do to keep your house and yard looking good. For commercial use and larger spaces, it’s one less piece of industrial maintenance equipment and less hours of payroll.

Also, you don’t have to water synthetic grass. This not only saves a lot of money, but also ensures that your lawn doesn’t turn an ugly brown during a drought. By some estimates, homeowners use as much as 75% of their water during hot weather on their lawns.

Also, synthetic grass is much better for the environment. You don’t have to use fertiliser, pesticides, or weed killers. As we mentioned above, you don’t have to waste water. You don’t have to run a petrol engine to run a lawnmower. The carbon footprint of a synthetic lawn is a lot smaller than that of a well-maintained natural grass lawn. For commercial usage, there is even more disparity between the various footprints.

Possibly the best thing about synthetic grass, though, is that it always looks great. No matter whether the weather is hot, cold, or in between, your lawn always looks its best. It can take the wear and tear of kids and pets with no problem. When it rains, there isn’t any mud because there isn’t any soil. There aren’t muddy areas, or even worn areas on most residential lawns.

A lesser-known but important fact about synthetic grass is that it is cleaner and more sanitary than natural grass. Pet urine runs through it, while pet droppings are easily removed. As mentioned, there is no mud, and no chemical residue: just pure, green synthetic grass.

Synthetic grass is also great in special situations where it is impossible or impractical to have natural grass.

The bottom line: no matter how you “cut” it, synthetic grass is better.

Did You Know: Synthetic Grass Playing Fields Use Recycled Tyres

It is natural for many to think that natural grass is “greener” than synthetic grass: what could be better for the environment than a nice, well-manicured natural grass sports field, right? In reality, though, synthetic grass has a very “green” effect on the environment.

It takes a lot of water and, in many cases, chemicals to maintain a natural grass playing field. Watering lawns affects the supply of water, which actually raises the prices in the long run, besides putting more of a strain on natural resources.

On the other hand, once the synthetic grass field is manufactured, there are no other costs or stresses on the environment. It’s a one-time only proposition.  There is no water or land pollution from chemicals and no carbon emissions from lawn mowers or tractors.

While synthetic grass might appear to extract a lot of resources, it actually uses recycled tyres for the rubber “crumbs” that are an essential part of all-weather sports fields.

According to Pacific Rubber, a recycling company based in Auckland, New Zealand, their products have been used in 25 synthetic soccer, rugby, hockey, and baseball fields across Australia, New Zealand, and New Caledonia.

The firm’s records show that they recycled 4,000 tonnes of used tyres, which would normally go to landfill, in 2011 alone.  At St Peter’s College in Central Auckland, they recently installed an all-weather pitch in which 250 tonnes of rubber from 28,000 waste tyres were utilised. Remember: these are just numbers from one recycling firm.

The benefits of synthetic grass, whether residential or commercial, are well-documented. The ease of maintenance and the resulting lowered costs are at the top of the list. Also, it’s great to know that your lawn or playing field is going to look and feel the same, consistently, day after day. Whether it’s a soccer pitch, a tennis court, or your lawn, there just aren’t many unpleasant surprises with synthetic grass.

Now, you can add a very important item to the list: synthetic grass, artificial lawn is environmentally sound. Knowing this can make someone feel a lot less guilty about where their old tyres go the next time they buy a new set for their car or truck.

Glorious Grass

Sports stadiums are frequently in the news around Perth. There are the State Government’s plans for a major new sporting stadium for AFL and other sports at Burswood, there is the much anticipated Perth Arena (eventually) nearing completion, the world famous WACA and its plans for expansion and then there is the home of Perth Glory and the Western Force – nib Stadium.

We say the home of Perth Glory but as things stand, the old Perth Oval (now known as nib Stadium) looks like it may become the former home of Western Australian football (or soccer) as Glory chairman Tony Sage has suggested his club could have played their last game there.

This has arisen due to a dispute over the redevelopment of the nib Stadium which would reduce the capacity for Glory home games but interestingly Sage has suggested the new home for the Glory could be on synthetic grass.

It may sound like pie in the sky to many Glory fans – and Perth sports fans in general – but one idea Sage seems keen to explore is hosting his club’s matches indoors, in the Burswood Dome, which would need considerable renovations and alterations.

Sage reckons this would reduce the capacity from what Glory matches have been used to at nib Stadium, but believes the under-roof aspect of playing at the Dome could help create an electric atmosphere – which Glory fans have been renowned for regardless.

Burswood Dome was initially considered as a possible home for the Glory back in 2007, as the owners were still negotiating terms over staying at nib Stadium, and Sage obviously knows that synthetic grass sports surfaces have advanced dramatically in recent years.

Synthetic grass pitches can now be produced to the exacting standards of football’s world governing body FIFA. Even clubs in the world’s oldest league – the English Football League have stated a desire to install artificial lawn at their home grounds. There is hardly a lack of rain in the UK as there is in Perth but even in the wetter, cooler climes of England there are considerable savings available associated with the maintenance of synthetic grass.

So, is Perth ready for professional sport on synthetic turf? Why not? The Burswood dream is far from a reality for Perth Glory at this point in time but synthetic grass is starting to be used at tennis clubs, cricket clubs and bowls clubs around Western Australia. A major sporting stadium is probably the next logical step for synthetic grass, and at Green Planet Grass we believe a quality artificial football pitch will make a lot of people sit up and take note.

It Pays to Do Your Homework

We’ve said before that it’s important to be fully aware of your options when choosing synthetic grass products and installation.

Still a relatively new product on the Western Australian market, quality synthetic grass is a specialist product. Many start-ups have appeared in the Perth market recently making various claims about quality and price. We maintain that it’s vital to know what you’re likely to get for your money because artificial turf is supposed to be a long term investment.

But you shouldn’t take our word for it. These are the words of someone who did their own homework on synthetic grass and ended up rather satisfied with what he got:

“I competed a lot of research on various suppliers and decided that Green Planet Grass out of eight others, provided the best costing per square metre laid, provided Australian-made turf, were very professional in all their dealings with me, on time and completed the work as per their time frame and within budget. The final result is as I had expected and we are extremely happy with the final outcome,” says Don McLaren, who is a resident at Parkland Villas in Booragoon and the driving force behind our recent install there.

“The final finished course is very elegant, provides a good view from the surrounding areas, creates an added valuable asset to our village and will provide residents with additional outdoor leisure activities for many years into the future. New prospective residents on viewing the village are very impressed that we have installed a 9 Hole Putt-Putt Course,” he continues.

“Some of the Residents are using the facility during the week and at weekends with their children and grandchildren and as we intend to create playing teams between groups of residents, I expect the usage to increase over time with the extent of usage depending on the weather.”

We love the fact that the putting greens Green Planet Grass installed at Parkwood Villas are becoming a focal point for not only the residents’ leisure time but also time with their extended families. It is also apparent that the popular greens are helping to forge a sense of community.

That may not be the reason why Don selected Green Planet Grass as the best option for the synthetic grass installation, but we are confident that the artificial long pile Landscape Range grasses create a realistic fairway effect to enable chipping practise. And we know that the grass will have a long life because we only supply the best Australian-made products.

Village Manager, Denise Manning, is also very happy with the installation. “The residents love the new look green and the extra recreational facility it has created for Parkwood Villas,” she said.

We don’t want to sound like a broken record but if you do your homework when it comes to installing synthetic lawn and select a product and installation team you have confidence in, you shouldn’t be disappointed!

Forecast for greater savings

Western Australia’s synthetic grass specialists, Green Planet Grass, have pledged that synthetic grass products will produce greater savings for householders in the southwest of the state with water bills expected to rise by up to 30 per cent in the next three years.

Increased scarcity of water in WA’s warming climate has led the State Government to choose supplying residents with increased amounts of drinking water supplied by energy intensive desalination. The higher costs associated with desalination are likely to be passed on to consumers after the Water Corporation said that higher capital costs to expand the water network would flow through to tariffs in an Upper House committee hearing.

The Water Corporation had already seen a ten per cent increase in customers requesting more time to pay their bills in the last financial year.

“Synthetic grass enables householders in Perth to eliminate the need for watering their lawns, leading to significant savings over the long term,” said Jeff Dennis, Managing Director of Green Planet Grass. “We are used to living in a hot, dry climate but the pressure on our water resources is clearly growing and the cost impacts are being felt by more and more people in our suburbs.

“An upfront investment in synthetic grass enables Western Australians to make drastic savings on their water bills, and those savings will only increase as the years go by. In Perth the greatest proportion of household water consumption is usually outdoors as people endeavour to prevent their gardens becoming parched and dried out so it stands to reason that eliminating the need for lawn irrigation can play a major role in slashing water bills. This will become more and more important to householders as our water costs rise.”

Green Planet Grass believe that the projected price rises will mean the savings Perth customers can make will enable them to recoup the initial outlay required to purchase and install synthetic grass within two to three years.

4,000 Lawns and Growing Daily

If you live in Perth, you will probably be aware of the increasing use of synthetic grass in gardens and other residential settings in recent years.

You would also probably be aware that numerous ways of getting synthetic grass for your home have emerged.

When we started Green Planet Grass we were determined to provide products and services which Perth householders could rely on, particularly because synthetic grass is still a relatively new product for the Australian market place.

We invested a lot of time and resources to ensure that we could supply the best quality Australian-made turf available and guarantee that our professional installation services would stand up to the many tests outdoor surfaces encounter on a daily basis.

It is important that our customers trust Green Planet Grass because we want them to be comfortable with the investment they are making for their homes.

And we believe that trust is a key reason why we recently passed the 4,000 lawn mark in Western Australia. That’s around 1,000 households a year making ongoing savings on their water bills and having much more leisure time to enjoy their lawn rather than toiling over the maintenance.

We are renowned as the synthetic grass specialists in Perth because that is our vocation. We are dedicated to high quality surfaces, wherever we are asked to install them.

To put the number of lawns we have created for Perth householders into perspective we should point out that we very rarely install lawn on areas less than 20m2. Obviously, most Perth plots are much larger than that and we have created all shapes and sizes of lawns right across the metropolitan area.

The average size of our lawn installs is somewhere in the region of 40m2, which means the total area of lawn we have installed in Perth exceeds 160,000m2 – that is eight times the size of Australia’s most iconic sporting surface at the MCG!

And, taking into account the fact that a 50m2 Buffalo grass natural lawn requires around 73,000 litres of water per year to stay green, we reckon our lawns should have saved Perth households a total well in excess of 200 million litres of water since 2008. And that’s just a start because our lawns will never need watering!

We haven’t mentioned the commercial and sports installations we have created so far in this blog but this continues to be a growing area for our business, with many clubs and local government authorities continuing to recognise the sustainable aspects of synthetic grass.

Meanwhile, our lawns continue to grow in popularity across Perth and with new installs on a daily basis we continue to pride ourselves on the products and services we offer as we work towards the 5,000-mark.

Game Set and Match for Regional Sports

While the number of Green Planet Grass lawns has been growing steadily around Perth in the last few years, the use of state of the art synthetic surfaces for sports and leisure has created a significant upsurge in demand for the synthetic grass specialists.

As we’ve said before, laying perfect lawn is not an easy business if you want to get it right but commercial and sports surfaces require even more planning and preparation. Green Planet Grass quickly recognised the significant benefits of synthetic sports surfaces because of their impressive durability and low maintenance.

Getting the product right is essential, which is why we supply and install not only a wide range of synthetic grass products for tennis, golf, cricket, football and multisports but also acrylic hard court surfaces – such as those used in the Australian Open – for an even wider range of sport and leisure activities.

What has really made a difference for local government authorities choosing to use Green Planet Grass products though is the fact that we project manage every aspect of a sporting development from start to finish. This gives reassurance to council executives keen to spend rate payers’ dollars wisely – they know they will save on maintenance costs in the long run and are given extra confidence from the outstanding quality of the finished product.

And this is why our sports surfaces have been so popular in regional Western Australia. In the last couple of years there have been few regions that haven’t been touched by a sporty Green Planet Grass makeover, from the Great Southern right up to the Pilbara. We have installed sports surfaces in Wheatbelt towns, Mid West Shires and even major mine sites.

Having put the finishing touches to no less than eight synthetic grass tennis courts at York’s Forrest Oval (no less than 4,200m2!) our installers took flight to the Pilbara town of Karratha to install four more tennis courts at the Bulgurra Tennis Club managed by the Shire of Roebourne.

Of course these new sports facilities are in addition to those installed around metropolitan Perth, with cricket, basketball and football installations well received in the north, south, east and west of the metro area.

We’re delighted to be growing our reputation right across WA’s vast regions and we know that it’s because we deliver quality. We know our clients and the countless people who play sport on the surfaces we install demand the best so we go every inch of the way to ensure that our synthetic grass and acrylic hard court surfaces perform to the max.

Perfect putting at Parkwood

Perth’s synthetic grass specialists, Green Planet Grass, have transformed a recreational area into a sumptuous putting lawn with artificial grass surrounds.

Active leisure time is now much easier to access for the residents of the popular Parkwood Villas retirement village in Booragoon.
Local resident Don McLaren sparked the project and was keen to add a putting green to the array of facilities already on offer at Parkwood Villas.

Green Planet Grass provided a perfect solution, combining the company’s expertise in both sporting and residential synthetic grass solutions to provide an integrated artificial turf landscape using Putt Putt for the greens and surrounds of Cool Earth.

Managing Director of Green Planet Grass, Jeff Dennis, said: “At Parkwood Villas our design team worked closely with the management team and residents to ensure the final product was suited to the needs of the clients. We can provide a variety of surrounds such as the Cool Earth used in Booragoon or one of our artificial long pile Landscape Range grasses to provide a fairway effect to enable chipping practise.”

Village Manager, Denise Manning, said: “The residents love the new look green and the extra recreational facility it has created for Parkwood Villas.

“Green Planet Grass provided a very high level of customer service from start to finish, giving us real confidence in the installation. I cannot speak highly enough of the staff that I dealt with over the course of the project and the finished product speaks for itself. The professionalism and efficient service on all aspects of the project was exemplary.”

Green Planet Grass golf products also have a triple reinforced polypropylene matrix backing for increased stability and the range includes specially designed surfaces for putting, fairways and tees.

Why It Is Worth Seeking out the Specialists

If you have toothache you probably go and see a dentist, not your General Practitioner. If you want gourmet food you seek out a quality delicatessen, and not a supermarket. And if you are looking for antique furniture, you should find a specialist dealer because you will not find what you are looking for at Harvey Norman or Ikea.

Likewise, when you decide to install synthetic grass in your garden then it is not advisable to source out a product from one of those multi-purpose outdoor superstores if you want to be sure that your artificial turf is going to last for a long time and not deteriorate too rapidly. It is not that we have a problem with those outdoor superstores – they are very useful outlets for the myriad things you need around the home for our great Australian outdoor lifestyle – it is just that we firmly believe that synthetic grass is a special product and needs a specialist’ expertise in order to fully understand the benefits of a lush-looking green surface that you can rely on for many years.

There are also lots of small-scale distributors recently who have sprung up as certified suppliers of artificial turf. Oftentimes, these small businesses have emerged from other gardening establishments, and do not endure the competition within the industry, which is not great if you are relying on a product warranty.

We should point out that there are dozens, more likely hundreds of different types of synthetic grass products available in Australia now. But it is important that you are confident in the investments that you make considering that there are also many products available that came from Asian manufacturers, of which is very difficult to verify its quality. Perhaps more concerning – especially if you have children or pets – is that some products do not guarantee its non-toxicity.

Synthetic grass specialists, Green Planet Grass, are proud to state that our products are Australian-made and we guarantee that our artificial turf is 100% free from toxic materials. Your pets and children – as well as the environment – can be safe.

Unless you have a specific purpose, we would also advise you to avoid the synthetic grass square ‘tiles’ that have been appearing in some multi-purpose stores. They are really not a feasible solution for a good quality lawn over the long term.

One of the key reasons for favouring a synthetic grass specialist is that our Australian-made synthetic grass products have been developed with more than 20 years of research and testing. It is also important to bear in mind that Green Planet Grass is dedicated towards producing one main type of product that we pride ourselves on the knowledge that we have built top-quality synthetic grass, and installed in excess of 4,000 lawns across Perth.

Moreover, we have highly skilled and experienced team of installers, who are not only good in garden landscaping but who also have the special skills needed to install synthetic lawns to the highest standards.

If you are looking for quality synthetic lawn that you can be confident in, knowing it will look good for many years then seek out the best synthetic grass specialists in Perth, Western Australia.

When the Colour of Your Grass Lawn Says Most

Well, autumn was welcomed with a not so unusual heat wave in Perth. Again, you may remember last March when it was etched with countless days of recorded temperature above 30oCelsius – and many of those days were above 35oC – and they say autumn is supposed to start on March 1.

The autumn of 2011 followed a hot, dry summer, and even a dry spring before that. Natural grass lawns around Perth and anyone who had kept to their rostered sprinkler days have been rewarded with a parched, brown lawn. There really is not much option unless you ignore water regulations as advised by the Water Corporation and accept a hefty water bill.

It is worth remembering though how the autumn of 2011 followed many months that was wet than the average during the second half of the year. Does this translate into greener natural grass lawns in our suburbs? The proof is there for all to see – with verges, median strips and lawns having taken a battering from several days of just under or just over 40oC – and no significant rainfall for weeks.

So March is perhaps the month when the colour of your grass lawns says most. If you have a natural grass lawn watered within Water Corporation’s guidelines, chances are that it will not be green at all. The lush natural grass lawns that you see around may have probably been drinking a lot more than the scarce rain that has fallen from the sky. And the lawns that look best at this time of year are most likely to be made with high quality Australian-made synthetic grass lawns like those sold and installed by Green Planet Grass.

The Perth autumn (probably better described as summer part two) is when your synthetic grass lawn will stand out the most. You would not have to waste time worrying about how much watering and maintenance.

March really is a great time to enjoy your lawn too. The second half of the month is being tipped as somewhat less extreme by the weather forecasters and it is a great time to soak up some warmth from the sun with a barbecue and a few beers before winter comes, comfortable in the knowledge that you are not wasting our scarce water resources. You can have plenty of time to enjoy the garden rather than using your spare time on turf maintenance. And your grass will lie as green as any other time of the year.

If you would like more information about Australian-made synthetic grass lawn, contact Perth’s synthetic grass specialists, Green Planet Grass.

«Older Posts
Newer Posts»