Native plants ftw! Did anyone look into pocket forests too? I'll try to pitch it on my next community meeting
this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2025
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No Lawns
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We planted clover; it blooms (great for pollinators), spreads fast, is very comfy to sit on, absorbs shock better when you fall on it, has a max length that's much shorter than grass, so you don't really need to mow the lawn unless you prefer it short and leaves less space for other undesireable plants to grow, while not needing much water to stay green (saving water). It's pretty great honestly!
Little fact: clover is edible, so if you feel like eating clover nectar, you'll be able to. I know some people might find that weird, but it tastes very good, which is why many farmers let their bees collect clover nectar to make their honey (it makes sweet/tangy delicious honey, due to how sweet clover nectar tastes to begin with).
Clover sucks if you got children that step of the bees.
Fucking... Don't tell me to look both ways before crossing the street, tell the cars to wait! That's why I need childism.
Teach your children to watch where they step, simple as.
I don't understand what you mean? I was around plenty of clover as a child and never got stung once, neither did my siblings. It's not that hard to avoid bees/wasps/bumblebees. Besides, most times they are too busy buzzing around the clover flowers (when they are in bloom that is) to even be bothered that you're there to begin with. The bloom doesn't even last that long.
If you teach the kids to respect their environment and be cautious during blooming time, they are pretty good at avoiding getting stung/bit by the pollinators in general.
I stepped into them a lot. Some people find it difficult to look before every step they take. I cannot do that. Blooming time is long and playing kids pay less attention to their surroundings.
Edit: like 5 times. Which is an issue if you stop being able to walk after you step into them.
Do you not have a dedicated area for play? If you have kids, you're supposed to have a dedicated area with no foliage (like a marble/sand/gravel or whatever mowed/bare patch they can chill in). Btw, this isn't just for clover, it's for grass too, because ticks exist and they love grass/clover patches.
Also clover bloom peaks during late June and early July, meaning outside of those periods the flowers are sparse and can be avoided easily. There are solutions to this. If you currently have clover, just mow a play area down for the kids, with a path leading to the house and maintain it. It doesn't have to be the whole yard.
I've always wondered what it must be like to be a cow and just eat the floor
You don't eat the leaf of it, you pick the petal and suckle the nectar out... it's one of the rare flowers that you can eat the nectar of. Also if you ever ate broccoli and cauliflower, congratz, you ate a flower, like a cow would.
I highly recommend clover yards. Minimal upkeep and they help nature. They also require like 60% less water and stay green longer. Only grow to about 4-6” so you don’t have to mow.
Tell that to the home owner's association.
Please.
Our first one of the year earlier this week
Victorian aristocracy: ah, yes, mowed laws, because useful land is for peasants.
Americans: FREEDOM LAWNS
A major cultural component of the US is the cult of wealth. You're kind of taught/expected to put forward the veneer and appearance of economic success and wealth, even if you are neither. Fundamentally, Americans have been taught a sort of economic moralism that goes that good people become wealthy people and bad people become poor people, ergo the wealthy are good and the poor are bad. So, you want to project that you're a good person, and one way to do that is projecting the appearance of wealth. Shit drives me bananas, man.
The chinese used to present their wealth by making dumplings with a lot of meat and thin wrappings.
Pollinators HATE this one simple trick!
Still get knocks on my door from companies wanting to help me with my yard.
No thanks.
Bunnies made homes in leaves, I get to watch a red-tailed hawk hunt in my backyard with their adolescent hawks, baby deer taking naps in the grass, the turtles still visit and have a places to lay their eggs (small pond on property), peeper frogs in the spring, lightning bugs like crazy in the summer, 3ft garder snake that suns in the bushes / front steps in the summer, birds have taken over the bushes and my dogs get to chase bunnies and watch the birds from the windows.
Besides this being a remenant of slave ownership, look how many slaves I have to keep my lawn perfectly manicured type thing, it's just another capitalist shit storm they sell you to keep you from seeing what's really going on and paying more for things that are ultimately killing you, us, everyone.
Oh, and I don't spend every waking fucking moment on the weekends, mowing, raking, moving specific nature into another spot, all for vanity's sake and to turn around and do it all over again.
Or go get gas, spill it filling up the lawn mower, further pollute the atmosphere etc., (my stuff is electric anyways).
So many benefits to this.
Take your time and energy back.
Stop fighting nature.
Let the planet live like it wants.
Do you just let your grass grow wild or planted something like clover like others are suggesting?
For now, I let it grow wild and mow it in certain areas because the grass grows so long and thick it's like a foot tall shag rug standing up. My dogs get lots in it and there's a ton of ticks if I don't.
I also already have wild strawberries, clovers, etc. and I'm happy for those to take over the yard. But I want to add patches / areas of native wild flowers eventually. Help the pollinators out some more.
There's a place, in my state, that sells native griund cover and even gives tips on how to 'kill' your yard and replace with native ground cover.
I also didn't specify, my backyard is all open and I've let that go completely. It's really fun to see how nature has taken it back.
Part of the front is fenced in, to keep the dogs safe, but that's the only part I do any mowing in, so I can see my pups when the grass grows too long.
Thanks for asking!
What do you do with yours?
I let it grow for a 3 weeks before cutting. Nothing special over here. My grass grows slow so that's nice.
I've thought of doing some planting but I get over whelmed and just let it go
Still seems nice to not have to mow every weekend :) I think the clove just grows and doesn't take much effort, but killing the lawn seems overwhelming.
Hope you can get to the point where you can let it go :)
I live in a van, I've spent a lot of time deep in the woods all across the US. There are still hardly any insects when the nearest lawn is dozens of miles away. This is almost definitely related to industrial scale pollution effecting the entire ecosystem not just just localized habitat destruction.
I live in California's central valley. It's a big area that's kind of similar to the serenghetti in terms of ecology in that it's technically a desert purely by rainfall measures, but it's a seasonal wetland in practice. Suffice it to say that bugs used to be off the fucking hook here; if you drove for forty minutes, your car was caked. Now, you barely get six bugs. Scared the shit out of my nature-loving mom when I pointed that out.
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