Artificial Grass Not Making the Cut

Dane Lacey can't mow his new front lawn. He can only wash it with a garden hose or clean it with a leaf blower.

The grass will never grow and is guaranteed against losing its zucchini-green hue, and it will always crunch when he walks on it.

"It's also ungodly hot," the 42-year-old Hillcrest physician said. "On hot days I can't stand on it in my bare feet."

Lacey has installed in his front yard the latest in San Diego lawn-design trends – fake grass – and two local retailers are vying for a piece of the market.

Within the past year, a Florida-based fake-grass company called SYNLawn opened a retail store in San Diego. Local fake-grass distributor EasyTurf also opened one in Escondido.

Installation isn't cheap, as prices range from $6 to $10 per square foot including labor. But both companies say the fake grass is flying off the shelves to homeowners who want to save money and time on maintenance and protect against animal damage.

EasyTurf's owner, Dave Hartman, says the company has installed the fake grass at about 425 local homes since he started the company four years ago.

SYNLawn officials say the San Diego store has supplied about 100 local homes since it opened in August 2003. The company has five other retail stores around the country.

"We've been swamped for the past couple of months," said Ryan Judkins, general manager of SYNLawn's San Diego store. "We're booking six weeks out."

Some local landscape architects have derided the trend.

Marty Schmidt, owner of San Diego-based Environs, said he would use fake grass for golf putting greens and sports fields, but never on a front yard.

"I'd put it in the pink-flamingo, cheesy-landscape category at that point," he said. "You might as well buy AstroTurf or lava rock. It's falling into that vernacular. It just looks phony."

Glen Brouwer, a partner at the Integration Design Studio in Encinitas, said his firm would install fake grass in a yard if a customer requested it.

"But we wouldn't do it with a smile on our face," he said. "From an aesthetics standpoint, I don't think it does the same thing as real grass. There's an intangible quality to real grass. There's a different color green and there's a different texture to real grass that can make all the difference in the world."

SYNLawn customers such as Lacey buy grass made entirely of a proprietary formula of nylon or other plastics blends.

EasyTurf's grass is a blend of polyethylene and polypropylene plastics. The company has exclusive distribution rights in San Diego County for the FieldTurf brand, whose turf is installed at professional football and baseball stadiums around the country.

Customers get the same turf, but with shorter blades of grass.

One difference between the two stores is that SYNLawn allows customers to self-install their grass, while EasyTurf's prices include mandatory installation.

Hartman of EasyTurf said fake grass is difficult to install and requires professional attention.

"It's just not as easy as one would make it out to be," he said.

Kerry Emery, a 43-year-old nurse anesthetist, hired EasyTurf to install in her back yard three years ago. She laughed when told of another company offering self-installation.

"A self-install? You've got to be kidding," Emery said. "We watched the company install this, and it just doesn't look like something I would want to do – no matter how much you could save."

She and her husband decided to buy fake grass after their puppy discolored a patch in their back yard.

"This stuff totally solved that problem," she said. "It's perfect for that purpose. It looks great all the time."

SYNLawn customers such as C.B. "Robi" Robison say it's easy to self-install. It took Robison, who lives in Sherman Heights, two weeks to complete his back yard.

He spent about $2,000 on the project, about half of what he would have spent had he hired installers. But because of his home's historical designation, he doubted he would ever do his front lawn.

"We're talking about a Victorian house here," he said. "Having artificial grass in front of a Victorian house is a little over the top. Although it could look very nice, it would be a slight to the overall condition of the house to have fake grass right in front."