ECD Germany IP-2373

Where this shelf belongs

All seven listings here name balcony, terrace, garden, playground, decorative areas, camping.

None describes an artificial lawn installation — the sub-base, sand levelling layer, weed membrane, jointing tape, pinned edges and brushed-in sand infill that a permanent artificial lawn needs.

This shelf sells outdoor carpet, and that fact bears directly on the 35 mm pile below.

The four-colour pile, which is the realism feature

“This high-quality artificial grass convinces through its realistic four-colour appearance and looks like real grass.”

That is the most substantive realism claim on this shelf, and it is the one that actually works.

Real grass is never one green. A lawn contains lighter new blades, darker mature ones, blue-green tints depending on species, and a layer of pale brown dead material at the base — the thatch this site’s aerator shelf exists to rake out.

Single-colour artificial grass reads as carpet for exactly that reason. The eye registers uniformity instantly, at any pile height, and no amount of length fixes it.

A four-colour pile normally means two or three greens plus a brown or beige thatch fibre, short and curled, sitting at the base. The thatch fibre does two jobs at once: it breaks the colour up, and it physically supports the long blades from below.

That is how commercial artificial turf is built, and no other listing on this shelf mentions it.

35 mm, and the problem nobody selling a mat will tell you

The tallest pile here, where the range runs 5, 14, 25, 33, 35 mm.

Tall pile looks most like grass. It also cannot hold itself up indefinitely.

In a properly installed artificial lawn, kiln-dried sand is brushed into the base of the pile after laying. It fills between the fibres and supports them upright, which is why a commercial installation still stands up after years of use.

A mat laid loose has no infill. The fibres stand by their own stiffness, and under a table leg, a plant pot, a barbecue or a sun lounger they take a permanent set. A flat rectangle appears and it does not recover fully — brushing the pile up with a stiff broom helps and does not restore it.

So the 35 mm is worth having where nothing stands on it: a garden corner, a strip along a wall, a dog run, an area that is walked across rather than furnished.

For a terrace with a table on it, the 14 mm and 25 mm products on this shelf are the more sensible choice, and the 5 mm needle-felt carpet cannot be flattened at all.

Both fibres, and a double backing

“Made from high-quality plastic (polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP)) material and offers a dense, hard-wearing structure. The double backing provides extra stability and a long service life.”

Two useful statements.

PE and PP together is the proper construction. Polyethylene is the soft flexible fibre used for the visible blades; polypropylene is the stiffer springy one used for the curled support fibre at the base. One mat on this shelf is 100 % PP at 33 mm — tall and stiff throughout — and one is PE at 14 mm.

At 35 mm, having a PP support fibre is not optional. It is what gives the PE blades anything to lean on in the absence of sand.

A double backing is a primary woven layer the tufts are stitched through, plus a secondary coating — normally latex — that locks them in. Naming it as double is a claim about dimensional stability: a large piece that stretches, shrinks or curls at the edges is the failure mode of a thin single-backed product, and a 4.5 m² piece is large enough for it to matter.

Water-draining

Stated, without the mechanism named.

Six of the seven listings on this shelf mention drainage; one does not. Two name the method precisely — perforated latex, and rubber with microchannels — and this one states the property.

The reason it matters is that a latex backing is waterproof by nature. Without perforations it is a tray: water runs down through the pile, meets the backing, spreads sideways and sits.

And the thing drainage does not prevent

Moss and algae in the pile.

A 35 mm pile is the best leaf trap on this shelf. It collects leaf litter, seeds and airborne dust deep between the fibres, holds moisture in it, and in shade grows green film around the fibre bases — and in time enough organic matter accumulates for actual weeds to root in it.

This is worth stating plainly on a lawn care site: artificial grass is a hard surface with a textured top. The three concentrates on this site’s moss killer shelf — for stone, wood, roofs and terraces, and never for a real lawn — are the products for it.

The unadvertised maintenance on a tall pile is blowing or sweeping it out, several times in autumn. A mat left under a tree for two autumns has soil in it.

4.5 square metres on a 1.5 m width

150 × 300 cm, at about 15.78 € per square metre — the dearest on a shelf running from about 7.00 €.

The 1.5 m width is better than the two 1 m rolls here. Seams are what give artificial grass away: two cut edges never match exactly in pile direction, and the join catches light differently from each side.

Two rules no listing on this shelf gives: lay every piece with the pile leaning the same way, and butt the edges rather than overlapping them — an overlap is a ridge and a trip hazard.

The widest product here is 400 cm, which covers most balconies seamlessly.

What goes unpublished

No weight per square metre. One product on this shelf publishes 850 g/m², and weight is the real quality measure — the mass of fibre and backing per unit area is what separates a mat that recovers from one that lies down after a season.

On the tallest pile on the shelf, at the highest price per square metre, that is the figure that would justify both. It is absent.

No fire classification. The same single product publishes Efl. On a terrace, next to a barbecue, a 35 mm plastic pile is the most flammable-looking thing on this shelf and the listing says nothing about it.

No pile weight or stitch density, which is the other half of how a tall pile is judged.

Availability

From 71 € to 87 €, that being the spread across the German, French, Italian and Spanish Amazon stores on the day of the survey.

Listed and unsold: the American and British Amazon catalogues hold the reference with nobody behind it.

Taken from Keepa on the day this page was last revised; stock and prices move without notice.