We are building soon and are considering artificial turf simply because my fiancé and I are both in wheelchairs and maintenance on natural turf is something we can't do. The costs involved in having a mowing service come (almost weekly in summer) would be too great in the long term.
Plus, the artificial is much easier to navigate and be active in the yard with the kids.
Our other potential idea is go natural turf and lay out the coin for one of those automatic robot lawnmowers. Has anyone had much experience with them? Do you end up with clippings everywhere?
in this situation, rather than turf or fake, just go with pavers...so much better, the back yard will still be an active one, honestly. with the fake, it gets too hot, like how you wouldn't walk across a hot beach in summer, you wouldn't want to walk across the fake either, thus the yard ceases to become active!
I'm certainly not paving the entire yard of a 5 and 7 year old.