Hanging Basket Liner Blues

Regular readers will know I've been an advocate of using hanging basket liner to represent grass for about 20 years now, resisting the more popular methods of grass application that have become available... until now. 

Having got the basic ground cover in place I was ready to start the application of hanging basket grass in my usual fashion by laying down neat PVA and applying the brushed hanging basket, letting it dry and pulling the backing off before manicuring it as desired. It failed, twice over. After several sessions I had a very patchy effect and several areas had no effective grass "growth".

I had used my usual PVA, twice. Some of the PVA was absorbed into the material and not bonding to the ground surface. This current PVA is a just post-Covid purchase and I'm not convinced it is as good as the old stuff. I then tried Gorilla PVA and had better results but not perfect, still ending up with some areas entirely not stuck down. I then tried a coat of Matt Medium on the next area to seal the surface first, but it made little difference. The photo above was the result - it may not look too bad in the photo but there should really be grass everywhere...

This is a closer view, PVA was applied across the whole area in front of the rocks!

I have put some of the issues down to the coldness of the workshop during the week I was laying down the grass, hovering a few degrees over freezing most of the time. I have had a few fails before but never to this level and frankly not to this level of disappointment. I have now stripped back a lot of the current grass, sealed the surface with Matt Medium and added a thin layer of ground foam to start again. At around the same time I fixed down the resin tree stump and blended in the ground surfacing around the base.

Whilst I am still a big proponent of this method of creating grass I decided that I could do without the hassle and I therefore bought myself an early Christmas present in the form of a small static grass applicator. Experimentation has begun...

Colin