A lawn expert on Northumberlandia

Before I visited Northumberlandia , the idea of using grass to create a sculpture in the shape of a woman's naked body struck me as pretty bizarre. But though she might not look much like a real woman, landscape architect Charles Jencks 's design is very appealing. From the ground, you don't get much sense of which parts of the body you're standing on – until you walk up to the highest point, her forehead. From there, you can see her nose, hands and hip bone. It's an innovative idea, but I can't see it catching on. You'd need a huge area of land to make it work, and it would be very expensive. To build the park, they've used large quantities of "overburden", or excess material, from a local mine: basically, it's poor-quality subsoil. It's fantastic to reuse industrial waste products in this way, but it's not easy – you need to mix subsoil with other substances to make it usable. I wouldn't advise people to try it at home, though recycling is definitely a wider trend: you see people using driftwood or reclaimed railway slats. The park's more meadow than lawn: it's planted with fescue , a slow-growing grass with a beautiful seed head. Some of it isn't fully mature yet – because of the huge interest, the developers have allowed limited visits ahead of schedule. When fully grown, the fescue will be beautiful: it blows in the breeze, invoking a lovely, serene feeling. They've also planted wildflowers, which the average lawn-owner might think of as weeds – though a weed is really just a plant growing where somebody doesn't want it to. We do get customers asking us to create meadows, but usually only if they have a large plot of land and want to encourage wildlife. Meadows require less maintenance than a manicured lawn – those need mowing at least once a week; the Northumberlandia grass will be mowed only twice a year. I don't envy the gardeners the task: it's a huge plot, and some of the slopes are pretty steep. I wouldn't fancy driving a lawn-mower down them. • David Truby is director of Greensleeves Lawn Care . Northumberlandia opens to the public on 20 October. Details: northumberlandia.com