It’s been a few years since we last posted an update about our home. Well we’re still living here and we absolutely love it. We’ve also filled up our bedrooms and have two gorgeous sons.

The backyard has always been an under-utilised area that we never really touched since we moved in. This was fine when there was just the two of us as the bush outlook is amazing, or when the boys were younger – but with their ever-increasing energy levels we decided to maximise the space and create an area the kids can have a ball in now, but also be a great space in 10-15 years time too.

With plenty of trees and lots of moisture, it’s always been a hard place to grow anything – in the winter it’s pretty wet and in summer it gets so dry the ground cracks. Ever since we found our section we’ve always had the philosophy that we wanted to work with the land and not fight it so we set out to renovate our backyard with the same mindset.

In what may surprise a lot of people, we opted to use turf, aka artificial grass, instead of natural grass. There were many reasons for this – the challenge of growing grass in the area was a big one, but the major one was it allowed us to create an area that is useable in almost any weather condition.

We asked Lance from Verdant Green to help us again and he did an amazing job forming the area, including approx. 60m3 of fill being carried in by hand. Then after speaking with a number of turf suppliers and looking at their products, we chose to use Urban Prestige from Urban Turf Solutions. It was the most natural looking grass we had seen and the Urban Turf team were awesome to deal with, coming out to look at the site and to talk through specs and install details with Lance.

Leap forward a few months and we can’t believe how transformational this has been. It has entirely changed how we use our home and connects everything together, turning an area that was never used into an outstanding feature of the house. The boys absolutely love their new backyard and spend hours out there every day. We’re also pretty partial to parking up in a bean bag with a glass in hand and just relaxing in our own little retreat.

We couldn’t be happier with our decision to use turf. We were a little worried it might look a bit fake in such a natural setting, but we needn’t have worried, it looks incredible, very natural and is so low maintenance. But the biggest thing is just how usable it is – within 5 minutes of rain, it’s almost dry again and you never have to worry about mud again.

Our only regret is we didn’t do this sooner.