This is the Guardian. A few weeks ago I went for a walk in my local park. It was one of those early spring days,

bright sun, cold air, daffodils just starting to come out.

So when I spotted a special section devoted to nature, admittedly for young kids, I thought, why not

take a stroll? But when I was in there I noticed something funny.

There wasn't actually that much nature in comparison to the rest of the park. I looked down at my feet and

realized most of the trail was laid with fake plastic grass. Needless to say I was surprised and immediately went on

social media to call for a ban. I might be in the minority with that opinion though.

Fake grass is becoming increasingly popular

for keeping green spaces perfectly green.

But what are the environmental impacts of our love of fake grass?

Could it even be affecting our health?

And should we actually be giving up the idea of the perfect lawn altogether?

From the Guardian, I'm Madeline Finley, and this is Science Weekly. This is a science weekly. My garden is sort of prime target for plastic grass because it's very small garden it faces not

north it faces east but it doesn't get much sunshine. There's a big apple tree

that's Sam Wolliston a feature writer for the Guardian. He was recently tasked with finding out more about artificial grass to see if it would help with fixing up his own garden.

There's enough kind of noise out there against plastic graze for me to realize

that it might not be the best thing to you.

Even if you weren't necessarily thinking about putting it down, there are a lot of people who do want

artificial grass so how popular is it?

research last year from 2022 found that 10% of UK homeowners with outside space had replaced at least some of their

gardens natural lawn with artificial grass.

And a further 29% so that's nearly a third of people are or would consider doing it. So the global

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