The alternatives, for those interested.

For those who don't want to maintain a natural lawn, Professor Howden suggests planting ground covers and shrubs, or growing a cottage garden.

And if native grass and shrubs won't work for your backyard, you could always lay down some bark or wood chip.

"You can just have bark chips like mulch over your earth, and that doesn't heat up as much as artificial turf and does keep the ground healthy," Assistant Professor Ting said.

It also doesn't feel nice under foot. Clover or moss are the way to go in my opinion, if you just want green ground cover. Even better though is food producing plants

Seems to be very common where I live. People have pulled out existing gardens or grass and just replaced it with this stuff, even on the verge which they proceed to park on.

We've just pulled up all of the grass in the front yard and replaced it with garden beds.

About to do the back yard.

No more mowing woooo!

Never did we consider fake grass, like really?