I'm thinking of replacing my front lawn with ground cover...thoughts?

[Rikki Jean]

I'm ready to ditch my front lawn. I'm sure my neighbors will be more than pleased, considering that burned-yellow grass and weeds don't really make for an attractive lawn.

We've talked about eventually doing a lawn conversion anyway, so I was thinking, why not just replace it with ground cover at this point, and then whenever we're ready, we can plant food there? I'm hoping to put a tree or two there this fall anyway...as far as watering goes, I'm much more likely to water something that actually has beneficial properties to it. Grass is just...a waste of water.

So, here are my questions:

-Do I have to remove the grass, or will the ground cover eventually choke it out?

-Do I have to do a lot of tilling before planting ground cover? I'm pregnant, and will be the one doing most of the work (not because DH is lazy or anything; he works seven days a week and sometimes they're 12 hour days), so I don't want to be killing myself out there.

-I'm most likely going to do something with clover in it. How worried do I need to be about it being invasive? Currently, the only things planted near it will be some flowers, cabbage, kale, and maybe a couple of fruit trees.

-The perennial cover crops I'm thinking of are:

• Strawberry O'Conner's clover (looks rather pretty, and only grows to 10")
• White Dutch Clover (looks okay, and only grows 6-10")
  
• Mini Perennial Clover Grass Mix (this might look too weedy...can be kept at 4-6" by mowing only twice a year!)

Any thoughts on all this?

[lmonter]

Clover's pretty invasive around here if I remember right. About up there with morning glory or bindweed. Pain to get it back out, too. Could be totally different for you though. Although I'm sort of starting to embrace the tall red clover since I can harvest and dry the flower heads for herbal remedy stuff...

Honestly, I'm quite a fan of the low-growing thyme. It's pretty, it's low (like an inch or two tall!), and smells lovely when you mow the lawn nearby or step on it. Plus, you know, you could harvest from it. My neighbor has a little patch in her yard that gets mostly ignored that just does it's thing. I'd totally love to throw that in someplace in the yard, but it needs more sun than some of the spots I have available.

As for tilling before planting... well, unless your grass area is pretty bare/sparse, you'll need to figure out a way to have the dirt available to the ground cover you want to plant. I know we wouldn't be able to just throw down seeds on top of the grass in our lawn, even the patches we never watered this summer. The roots are really in there - while the above-ground stuff looks sad, the roots will make everything look pretty and green from the spring rains again.
If you have some wiggle room in your budget, I bet you could make a deal with someone to till for you if need be - I know one of my u-pick guys basically rents himself out in the spring for tilling and such. Especially with so many folks out there looking for work or to try making a little extra right now...

[MidnightCommando]

You will need to kill off the existing grass as lmonter mentioned. Depending on how big your yard is, you could get a sod shovel and turn the grass over so it decomposes. Tilling is an option, depending on the type of lawn you have: some grasses are notorious runners and can resprout even after tilling. Other methods to kill the grass are smothering (cardboard) or solarizing with plastic. Again, it really depends on the size of your lawn and how much work you want to put in.

This is a great site and has a lot of info on groundcovers and native/low water landscaping. It is more geared for higher altitudes but can give you some ideas.

one more tip - compost, compost, compost. whatever you decide to put down, don't be stingy with the compost. Get a truckload of it and it'll make all the difference in establishing your new groundcover.

HTH!

[lmonter]

Originally Posted by MidnightCommando

You will need to kill off the existing grass as lmonter mentioned. Depending on how big your yard is, you could get a sod shovel and turn the grass over so it decomposes. Tilling is an option, depending on the type of lawn you have: some grasses are notorious runners and can resprout even after tilling. Other methods to kill the grass are smothering (cardboard) or solarizing with plastic.

Oh yeah! I forgot about the benign neglect thing with plastic! Hubby was drying out some of his 6mil plastic and random tarps on the front lawn that we usually use for covering up the wood piles, and whoops, turned the front lawn brown in patches in a matter of hours (hot day). Luckily, I guess, we just watered the next few days and it bounced back, but still. Talk about an easy way to kill the grass - and weeds! Just leave the plastic on for a week or three.

[Naturalyst]

: Wanting to do the same here. Looking for something that is attractive and low maintenance. If it's also edible to wildlife (or, us), all the better.

DH and I decided to let our lawn grow all the flowering and berry producing weeds it 'wanted' this year and sort-of mowed around them. We liked the flowers and the wildlife liked the berries. But, I'm sure the neighbors were not amused. Their front yards are all manicured.