When Clover Takes Over
After years of dogs, kids, and general neglect, my lawn is finally becoming a respectable carpet of green. The bare spots are filling in and the crispy dead edges are livening up. From a distance, my yard looks photo-perfect. The kind of luscious green that makes you want to take off your shoes — soft and welcoming to bare toes.
This transformation has not come about through a lawn service, or fertilizers, or any kind of TLC. In fact, most of what’s growing would throw a greenskeeper into fits. The clover has taken over! It’s pushed out most of the actual grass plus most of the dandylions. I couldn’t be happier with the results, and it’s made me think about how mixed up we’ve become in our quest for curb appeal.
Meet the common clover plant, the Robin Hood of plants.
Few homeowners share my fondness for this lovely plant. A true lawn enthusiast cringes at the sight of a three-lobed clover leaf among the grass blades. It spreads like crazy, they warn — but I see that quality as an asset.
So what’s so bad about clover? The main complaint seems to be that it breaks up the uniformity of a grass turf lawn. Homeowners like to see dense thickets of uniform blades standing at attention like little green soldiers, a monoculture of Kentucky bluegrass. But like so many things in life, diversity brings a lot of goodness — even to your yard. This sprawling, free-form groundcover adds more than just visual interest. Clover enriches the soil, feeds the bees, and saves you water/time/money.
Three reasons to let clover thrive in your yard
To better appreciate this unsung yard hero, let’s dive into the botany of Trifolium repens, the common white clover, vs. Poa pratensis, AKA Kentucky Bluegrass.
Clover enriches the soil.
Clover is a legume, meaning it’s in the pea family. Legumes are givers.
They are the Robin Hoods of the plant world: stealing valuable nitrogen
out of the air, which has more than it needs, and putting it back in
the soil, making it accessible to all nitrogen-needy roots.
Legumes feed pollinators. Clover produces pollen early in the season and the nectar flows well into fall, offering a consistent food source for bumblebees, native bees, and butterflies. Honeybees too! (which by the way are not the same as native bees. They are more like semi-domesticated little honey cows.) Next time you spread honey on your toast, thank a clover plant!
Grass, on the other hand, is a greedy little plant in terms of water and soil nutrients. It feeds no other organisms unless a cow or goat shares the space (and in that case, the Homeowner Association has bigger concerns than a little clover.)
Finally, my favorite trait of leguminous lawns: they rarely need attention and never need added chemicals. Clover grows in dense carpet-like mats, but stays low to the ground, rarely needing a mowing. The only reason to fire up the gas-guzzling mower is to clip the flowerheads once the nectar-production season has passed. Clover is truly the lawn-cover of choice for lazy environmentalists like myself.
Grass cannot even self-propagate, unless the seed heads are allowed to shoot up and mature, which really throws off the uniform height of the lawn. Is there nothing that the sod gives in return? Well, a toll on the wallet for one thing. Those herbicides, fertilizers, and irrigation all must be purchased, and the more successfully a homeowner provides these essentials, the more work the sod creates: hours of toil and trouble, clipping and trimming and aerating. Grass is perfect for those who love to spend their free time on yard work (note: not the same thing as gardening!) and who thrill to the heady smell of fertilizer and mower exhaust.
Not convinced yet? Check out the numbers. According to the Pesticide Action Network, more than 90 million pounds of herbicides are applied to lawns across the USA every year. American lawns also get double the dosage of pesticides applied per acre, compared to agricultural land. Those chemicals leach into the soil, water, and the plants themselves, poisoning not just the butterflies and bees but also our pets and kids.
Isn’t that enough to make you rethink what’s growing outside your front door?
My clover patches haven’t yet migrated into the carefully manicured lawns up the street. I don’t think my neighbors need to worry. Carefully tended perfect lawns don’t seem to appeal to the free-wheeling clover. This wild child plant prefers barren open spaces found on neglected lawns like my own.
I may soon find myself on the Homeowner Association’s watch-list, might even receive one of those strongly-worded warnings to shape up — but so far the neighbors have been a very tolerant and friendly group.
As for me, I’ll keep the clover. Now, if I could just get rid of those unsightly blades of bluegrass…
Looking for more stories about sustainability and nature?
Post a comment