Dandelion Taming.

Laying a lawn has always been a matter of either buying turf and rolling it directly onto the soil, or raking over the ground before sowing it with seeds and waiting. The latter option is cheaper, but it takes time for the lawn to properly establish itself, during which it must compete with weeds and the perils of hungry starlings, who immediately after seeding will come to regard the whole area as one gigantic bird table. Even in an established lawn, dandelions and other broad-leafed intruders remain a problem.
Weed control fabrics are a cunning innovation- they typically comprise either a tightly woven fibre material, or a polymer membrane full of tiny pores to allow drainage, while trapping the weeds below ground. Following one of my more recent landscaping efforts I was surprised to see blades of grass actually forcing their way up through the pores in one such membrane, which leads me to propose a more loosely woven version of the material, possessed of pores through which blades of grass may pass comfortably, while the larger leaves and shoots of unwanted plants cannot. The placing of such a membrane over a newly seeded lawn would have the advantage of frustrating the efforts of the local fauna to make a meal of it, and the eventual result would be a lawn permanently free of weeds. The membrane would remain flush with the ground, so would not be damaged by the necessities of mowing, and the consequent soil retention means that children could play without fear of trailing mud into their houses and angering their mothers. A logical development is the 'turf quilt', where soil and seeds are laminated between a lower layer of weed-control membrane, and an upper layer of this new material. The quilt could be purchased in sections, either seeded or ready grown, and laid straight onto the most unruly briar patch, creating an instant and resilient lawn.