We introduced a ton of clover into our lawn 4 years ago and have been letting it self-seed & spread. It’s been great.
My boomer-y neighbors don’t like it and make comments, but ours is the only green lawn for several blocks because it hasn’t rained for shit all summer. Plus we have wildflower areas so we also have all kinds of bumblebees, butterflies, and dragonflies cruising around.
We’ve tried both clover and thyme, but we can’t get them to really take off. But I think we just weren’t doing enough at a time and wildlife was eating it all. Our current course of action has been killing sections of grass with a tarp, then planting the clover and our first patch is doing well.
A tick wrote this post
An actual ecosystem would keep the tick population down though, but also if you don’t have deer regularly roaming through your front yard you should be fine too
I hate lawns. They suck water like nothing, require a lot of work and never look quite the way you want.
But let’s keep things in perspective here. The big argument against lawns is water use. I agree. But in California, for example, all residential water use accounts for less than 15% of the total use of water in the state.
If we want to save the environment we should start with what’s taking the remaining 85%.
I was talking to a guy at my neighbor’s party and he asked how I keep my lawn looking so good. I said “I mow it infrequently, keep it long, and don’t try to get rid of weeds.” In the hottest part of the summer mine still looks good, and it’s full of clover and dandelions for the bees.
I showed this to my city’s By-law officer. No luck…
A colorful biodiverse lawn is nice and all, but I’d prefer not to be harassed by all my neighbors, eaten alive by bugs, and be unable to use the lawn for anything other than looking at and feeling smug.
That’s funny because that’s exactly how lawns were created - to showcase that lords were wealthy enough to waste land rather than use it for food production. it’s essentially the ‘smash a bottle of expensive champagne challenge’ of the feudal period.
