Over the past couple of decades in particular we’ve witnessed enormous changes at our homes and in our yards, none more so perhaps than huge shifts in pricing of so many different consumer items. Housing prices in many regions have skyrocketed to extreme levels of utter absurdity when not so long ago housing was quite affordable and reasonably priced for most of us,
and we got backyards with those houses of yesterday too. Likewise but to the opposite extreme we’ve witnessed so many consumer goods have plummeted in price, and the range of consumer goods also explode to so many new categories. Yea, in yesteryear housing was cheap and consumer goods expensive, and today housing is insanely expensive and consumer goods incredibly cheap compared to what they once were. Everything suddenly seems reversed in this regard.
Along these same lines with such cheap consumer goods we’ve seen an abundance of trampolines, both small to very large in size, emerge in yards everywhere, and the number one place we see these trampolines being placed is of course right in the middle of the lawn.
And this is a horrible idea, and bad practice for many reasons.
Not only do we lose our lawn space once the trampoline is placed, but underneath that trampoline we also find that grass quickly becomes sickly in all that shade. Lawns thin out, bare patches emerge, and the grass becomes long and stringy. This of course requires us to move the trampoline regularly around the lawn area to stop any one area of lawn dying away. Likewise also is when it’s lawn mowing day, and we must move that gargantuan trampoline several times just to mow the lawn.
And so the Summertime battles rage around the suburbs of the nation, as we try to accommodate such huge play equipment by its constant movements as we attempt to find a perfect balance between lawn and trampoline. It’s a fight which will remain constant, and which will eventually get on top of many a homeowner as they finally surrender to the last possible option to regain their sanity and to bow out of these recurring weekend battles… and so many a trampoline ends up for sale on the internet.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
We can balance lawn and trampolines together, with just a little forethought.
Main image information // looks can be deceiving: this trampoline is newly placed - if left alone the lawn will die underneath the trampoline
Lawns And Trampolines Can Be Friends
The solution here is so obvious that many of us may kick ourselves for not thinking of it sooner.
If we have a big ol’ trampoline in our backyard then it goes to reason that our yard is big enough to hold a big trampoline. That’s the premise we’re going to take with this article, that the yard is of decent size to hold a trampoline of reasonable size within it. Bigger yard, bigger trampoline, smaller yard and smaller trampoline, so trampoline size and yard size are comparable to each other.
We choose a section of lawn area at the perimeter of the lawn, where we will permanently instal our trampoline. It’s at the side of a lawn or yard, and not in the center of the lawn, this is important.
Once we’ve chosen a good location for our trampoline, that area is now off limits to lawn or garden or anything else. It is the permanent home for our trampoline forever, and so we treat it as such and accomodate this area as such, permanent, not to be used for any other purpose at all.
We then put down some plastic or steel garden edging all around the trampoline.
The perfect trampoline and lawn combination, neat, clean, orderly
Any turf under the trampoline can be dug out and removed with a spade or sprayed with Glyphosate to kill it off permanently.
We can then fill in the underside area of the trampoline with wood chips, sand, or just leave it as bare earth if we wish.
We now have a permanent home for our trampoline.
No more moving trampolines to keep our lawns from dying, no more moving trampolines to mow our lawns every couple of weeks, no more sick and dying lawns, nothing obstructing us from using our lawns whenever we want and however we want.
The trampoline now looks like it’s a part of our yard, with a permanent home, and it looks neat and tidy.
When mowing the lawn, we simply go around the trampoline, easy.
And we can store other outdoor toys underneath the trampoline too.
Too easy.
Lawns, trampolines, and gardens all working together seamlessly.
Total cost: some garden edging material and some wood chips Cheap.
I told you that you’d kick yourself for not thinking of it sooner.
What are you waiting for?