Good first step is just seeding clover where grass is struggling.

Clover isn't a normal part of lawns anymore because broadleaf herbicide kills clover too. But there is zero reason to use herbicide on a fucking lawn anyways.

But you barely need to mow clover if it's dominant in an area. It "learns" the height you mow at, and just stops growing taller than that.

Like a 1/4 of my backyard only gets mowed once or twice a season, and it looks green as fuck because it's denser. That ground covers helps retain moisture in the ground, feeds bees and bunnies, and with all the bunnies, I even get foxes.

Plus clover produces nitrogen, so it naturally spreads to the poor soil and improves it because it can out compete grass and even weeds. Insisting on an "all grass, only grass" lawn is some boomer shit.

I'm one of them. Been converting entire chunks of an otherwise bland, uninteresting lawn to pollinator friendly patches. We have a certified milkweed garden for monarchs, entire sections full of drought-tolerant native plants, and rabbits have started living underneath the "canopy" of the flowering shrubs. The half of our lawn that's still grass is easily 10x the maintenance burden that our gardens are, and we've already developed a plan to phase out our front lawn entirely. Some of the grass in the back is good for picnics and dog play, but we're going to get rid of anything that's not actually used. Only problem is most of it's bermuda, which is a fucking PAIN to get rid of by hand.

I neglect my yard so much that appealing natural plants started growing on aestheticly pleasing spots, so I just left them.

Is there a fucklawns lemmy community?

My neighborhood is showing a transition into gardens and native plants. Its interesting that it seems to be happening with both older (retired) neighbors and newer (young children) neighbors. Its helps that the local garden centers have been doing lots of natives and grass replacements.

Quick shout out to Prairie Moon to buy your seeds. Fall seeding is great for natives

I can't wait for this to some day turn into "Are Millennials Killing The Grass Industry?"

Excellent! Now plant native fruit trees, bushes, brambles, and herbs and make a multilayered food forest!

Anecdotally, my neighborhood seems to be 70% manicured "perfect" suburban lawns vs 30% natural yard. Our little neighborhood also has a LOT of thick wooded areas and tall grass. Guess which houses look and feel like they truly belong?

Also, we have native plants and wildflowers in our yard (haven't gone full clover yet) and the amount of bugs and cute little critters around are incredible. So much life all bustling about. The bees love it, we had 6 different bumbebees across our 2 echinacea plants at the same time! So friggen cool to see.

I've been doing this for ages.

Now I've got an extra tree, and bunch of tall weeds with purple flowers on top. No idea what they are, but the bumblebees seem to like them.

I'd say I started doing this because I cared about nature, but really it's because I'm a big lazy bastard.

We keep spreading clover seeds. Waiting for it to take over. Fuck grass lol

I've spent the past few summers desperately trying to claw my lawn back from invasives. When we first bought our house I didn't want to remove anything until after a year to see what everything was, because I knew nothing about plants. I planted some natives in bare locations, but didn't realize just how crazy some of the vines and invasive species would be in claiming space.

I have an app on my phone for identifying plants. A few years ago, every ID said invasive from Asia or Europe. I cannot tell you how satisfying it is to see some native grasses and wildflowers finally taking hold in the areas that used to be Japanese Honeysuckle or pokeweed. But it was backbreaking, miserable work and I commend anyone who is fighting this fight.

I live in Texas, we had a big beautiful St. Augustin yard. Thick, green, very nice. 3 years ago I quit watering it. Last year I seeded it with a mix of Buffalo Grass, Curly Mesquite Grass, and Blue Gamma. It's almost taken over. It uses zero water, I only mowed it once the year before and twice this year because we got a boatload of rain this year unlike the year before. I stopped mowing the backyard and just removed all the wax and China berry shoots. I have all sorts of native flowers and Chili Pequin plants all over the place. The flowers are great and the birds are everywhere. Best decision I have made since I got this place.

My landlord is old and as poor as I am so when trees fall she'll have someone chop it up and they take what they want, but most of the large branches are left. It's been a few years now that a couple of trees fell and since the branches are left there the landscaper just goes around them and the area has become an awesome natural growth spot. I hope she never gets it removed!

Yep I'm doing it. I bought the parcel beside/behind my house and am letting those 3 acres 90% go back to natural.

I spend more time ripping thistles than anything, but at least I don't have to water them!

On a serious note, I am working on overseeding clover in half of my yard, and it's worked well in patches so far. Will probably take a couple seasons to get full results, just time consuming. Almost as much as my war against those goddamned thistles.

If it's native now is the time to sow yellow rattle. It's semi parasitic to grass and will allow other plants to establish where grass usually takes over.

I got rid of my very small front yard grass this year. Instead: some natural tall decorative grasses under the downspouts, but also some Dutch tulips, hyacinth, peony, daffodil. Cottage garden style. I got some good comments from the neighbors. And I don't have to mow one freaking pass around the front of the house 😂 I ran drip irrigation to get it started and put down cardboard and mulch. I haven't had any of the former grass try and poke up, thankfully. I've heard the best thing to do is just fill it with plants you want, so that plants you don't want don't have room to grow. Some of the tulips I got were bigger than my head!

I've wanted to do this, but just don't know where to start... House is very complicated (teirs down three times on the side, up three times in the back), a lot of invasive weeds always intruding in from neighbor's property and just too much area to cover...

effing love it!