Is Artificial Grass bad for the wildlife in my garden?

Hello, I have a degree in ecology and a keen interest in all wildlife. There is a variety of answers regarding artificial grass and wildlife mainly depending on your viewpoint. Firsty artificial grass does not directly kill any wildlife from them trying to eat it or bury into it anymore than decking or paving would. Secondly ever since your house was built, your garden is probably no longer as bio diverse as when it was part of a semi natural environment. Having a variety of plants in your borders to create a range of flowering times and different structural properties, that is trees, bushes, perennial bulbs etc will probably be more help than a small lawn. Creating refugia and allowing connectivity with neighbouring gardens is also important. You can compensate or mitigate for losing your turf lawn by mulching your borders with compost and other organic matter which will provide a good supply of invertebrates for birds etc. This a huge topic but I think that artificial grass is perfect for high traffic uses allowing much more utilisation for humans than a turf lawn. Hope this helps, kindest regards

Fake grass will not kill birds they know the difference from plastic to real grass

Environmentalists have warned that a growing trend to lay artificial lawns instead of real grass threatens the loss of wildlife and habitat across Britain. In gardens the sight of pristine, green artificial grass is becoming a familiar sight. But as families take to turfing over their open spaces with a product which is most often made from a mix of plastics – polypropylene, polyurethane and polyethylene there is growing alarm among conservationists and green groups. They say the easy fix of a fake lawn is threatening the habitat of wildlife, including butterflies, bees and garden birds as well as creating waste which will never biodegrade.

Creatures can't survive in the countryside because it is so full of chemicals and so they retreat into gardens, birds get absolutely nothing from artificial grass, they can't dig for worms or anything like that

Hi, the artificial grass will not kill the birds directly, however with the loss of bio diversity it does have an inderect effect on wildlife.