I recently travelled to South California to visit my sister who moved there last year.

Walking around her neighbourhood, one of the first things which struck me was that almost every home had a beautiful, bright green, well manicured lawn out front. On second glance however, it was plain to see that this lush carpet of green was precisely that - an artificial carpet.

Most everywhere you might find landscaped areas, outside stores, hotels, businesses etc, you saw this fake turf put down in place of natural grass.

Now of course this is mostly due to the State of California having been officially classed as suffering from drought conditions for around the last four years.

At the GIE-EXPO show in Louisville, Kentucky, last October, I met Kris Kiser head of the OPEI (the US equivalent of the AEA). He spoke to me about a phenomenon in the States which they as an organisation were hoping to prevent spreading from California into the rest of the country, which he termed 'the demonisation of the lawn'.

Basically he was referring to rhetoric which was emanating from the Governor of California's office, which was encouraging homeowners to rip up their evil, 'water guzzling' lawn and replace it with something less 'damaging' instead such as fake grass, decking or asphalt.

This seemed to me at the time as a very specifically Californian issue. Kris was concerned but didn't really think it had taken hold in other parts of the country yet, and I certainly didn't think we'd see similar over here. We love our garden stripes too much, everyone knows that!

Well a very interesting article in The Guardian recently gave me pause for thought. The excellent piece by Sandra Laville talks of a 'growing trend' to lay artificial in favour of real grass. She quotes Eamon Sheridan, managing director of Artificial Grass London, who says there has been an increase in demand for it across the board this year. “We have seen a 63% increase in sales in our case," he is quoted in the piece, "but we are part of a group of companies, one of which, Artificial Grass Direct, has been established a lot longer, and so far they have seen a 220% increase in sales this year on last year.”

Obviously I don't know what his starting point was, but a 220% increase certainly sounds like a lot!

The point of Sandra's article is to point out the environmental impact of a proliferation of artificial grassed areas. Conservationists are warning that wildlife will suffer with a lack of habitats and huge amounts of waste are being created which are non-biodegradable.

From the standpoint of our industry, we of course have the same concerns that the OPEI in the States do - that sales of turfcare machinery will be adversely affected by the trend.

So what can dealers do to help the cause? I guess just carry on being advocates for real lawns. When customers come through your doors, your specialist knowledge will extend not just to the abilities of the equipment you sell, but also to the value of naturally grassed gardens. To their environmental benefits, their value to personal health and wellbeing, and simply to their unbeatable aesthetics.