I’ve already covered the ultimate failure of clover as a groundcover in my garden, and now it’s time to dish the dirt on two more plants I’ve tried as lawn replacements and recently 
ripped out. Yes, I’m ready to name names.
Thyme
All five of the types of thymes that I received as samples from Stepables ultimately failed in my garden. Maybe because they don’t like our humidity, or I didn’t give them the right type of soil – I don’t know, but for their crimes of wimpy performance or outright death, they’ve been banished from my garden. But can you blame me? Look at this photo of thyme death, the type that slowly spreads until – well, I actually couldn’t stand waiting any longer, so it’s a goner.
Creeping Cinquefoil
Another sample from Stepables is Potentilla or creeping cinquefoil, and look how pretty it used to be, mixing nicely with Creeping Jenny in my front yard. Well, I’ve learned the hard way that these groundcovers can suddenly go bad, as evidenced by the photo on the right. Bad as in dead, for no known reason, but not before it killed off most of the Creeping Jenny. So, back to square one, with bare earth to cover.
Lessons Learned
Lawn replacement mistakes can be HUGE MISTAKES! Removing large quantities of failed groundcovers and starting over – that’s a big headache for any gardener. Or to be more precise, a big backache.
And while books and articles often recommend selecting several groundcovers that get along well together, finding ones that don’t devour their neighbors is much harder than those authors let on. So I’m experimenting and reporting my results, but who can know for sure that the plants I’m trying will perform the same way in their garden?
I’ve gotta admit, the more I explore alternatives to lawn, the more I appreciate why turfgrass is so damn popular. It’s cheap, relatively easy to grow, and caring for it does NOT require gardening knowledge or bending over.
Tweet
{ 7 comments }
Aw, boo. I am SUCH an advocate of thyme, but I live where the soil is dry drainage is sharp, and I also use lots of tiny gravel as a mulch to sharpen the soil even more. I’ve had some swaths of thyme die, and others do beautifully. Since I tend to plant in large numbers, the others creep and take over. Eventually…
I had the same problem with thyme in dry clay, but it did amazingly well between stones mixed with a little grit. What happened to your creeping sedum? What about natives, like Epimedium?
Brenda, it’s creeping sedums that I’m using instead of the thymes and Potentilla – love ‘em!
About natives, which ones would you suggest for this sunny spot that would look good all year?
Out of curiosity, would plants that grow well on green roofs also be adequate as lawn replacements?
I get that the drainage conditions from roof to bare ground are very different, but maybe the plants would be tough enough to adapt?
Robert – that’s exactly my thinking, and scroll down a few posts or click “Lawn Substitutes” in the categories to see my love song to creeping sedums as alternative to lawn.
What’s to love about them? No maintenance AT ALL except a bit of weeding, which can be done from standing position with a flame tool, shown in my recent post about sedums.
Lawn is also pretty dead and sterile… Siberian Strawberry is something *I* tried that “bombed out”…I suspect it was sensitive to the neighbor’s lawn herbicide, but it hadn’t done all that well anyway, so I tore out the few survivors.
That area is now covered with prairie dropseed, a short coreopsis, silky aster, butterflyweed, with some towering showy goldenrod behind! Not really groundcover, but I only mow it once a year, so I’m happy.
I maintain some lawn…a minimal amount. The rest of the 1 acre yard has been gradually converted to native woodland and prairie flowers, shrubs, and trees:)
Your last paragraph made me laugh. I’m really enjoying watching your lawn replacement project change over the seasons. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle. If you keep trying out different ground covers under different conditions and in different combinations you’ll find the right mix to have a year-round no-grass lawn!
It was interesting to read about the tiny gravel in some of the comments above.
Comments on this entry are closed.