Removing a lawn? Check out synthetic turf

It was often considered the bad toupee of the landscaping world by people who observed the glaringly fake grass that started appearing in the 1960s. Back then, it could even give football players the equivalent of rug burns if they were tackled on the stuff.

Though scoffing might still be a frequent response today when the topic comes up, the artificial turf industry has quietly reinvented itself and has been winning converts among residential and commercial customers fed up with planting, watering, mowing, edging, feeding, weeding, aerating, patching and all the other tasks of nurturing a real lawn.

"I had an area in the front with a large tree, and I couldn't get the grass to grow," says Clarence Parkison, of Livermore, who recently had faux turf installed. Now, it not only looks good -- "nice and green, trimmed," he says -- but current water restrictions might have doomed a real lawn, or at least have turned it brown.

Morgan Hill resident Helena Lowe says, "All my neighbors' grass is dead," alluding to irrigation restrictions put in place because of the drought. "It's just horrific. And mine is beautiful and green. Everyone always asks me, 'Who's taking care of your lawn?' "

Both Lowe and Parkison opted for higher-end, domestic-made ersatz turf, from one of several regional installers that get glowing comments on social media.

More aesthetically pleasing to many than a dry xeriscape of colored rocks, today's startlingly realistic artificial grass has come a long way in both quality and practicality. Many U.S.-made products are nonflammable, lead-free and nontoxic, making them fine for kids and pets. And they can be recycled.

But they're not cheap. "The initial outlay is expensive," says Burlingame resident Maureen Supanich. "But when you come down to it, it's really reasonable," she says, considering the costs of caring for a lawn yourself or paying a gardener to do that if pushing a mower isn't your thing.

According to Lance Schepps of South San Francisco's Onelawn, which manufactured and installed Supanich's turf, "For a residential application, you're looking at between $10 and $15 a square foot, installed." He contrasts that to natural turf prices starting at $2 a square foot for the base option and going up to $6 per square foot or more if irrigation is being added.

"You may spend 50 to 60 percent more for an artificial turf system than natural grass because sod's very cheap," says Brad Borgman of Heavenly Greens, a San Jose artificial turf installer. "The payback, if you're going with artificial, is anywhere from three to six years, depending on your water consumption and how you're using the surface."

While mock grass doesn't require a lot of attention, it's actually low-maintenance, rather than no-maintenance. According to Gabriel Hernandez of the Bay Area installer Better Than Real Artificial Grass, the homeowner with faux turf will need to "remove yard debris (and), depending on foot traffic, brush the blades up. That's pretty much it," he says. "If they have a dog, we advise they rinse off the lawn once a week."

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Removing a lawn? Check out synthetic turf