That’s what i grew, yes. And the first year, it kinda looked like that. Very lush, very green.
There are a whole lot of versions of this. Here’s one of them:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRFtFcILUF4 (grumble discourse will this at least show the link?)
Cute! Here’s the preview you wanted.
I’d be against it, but only because it’s not indigenous here and there are much better native ground covers to choose from that are in the same ballpark. But anything is better than lawn.
How do you feel about a “lawn” of anything soft enough to walk barefoot on that survives mowing from time to time?
(I’ve planted thyme in the backyard, looking for something more drought tolerant than clover. But i have a lot of other plants growing there, too.)
I meant grass lawn, there.
Other non-grass lawns I’m absolutely a fan of. I love herby groundcovers. Although the ones we have don’t need mowing, they stay close to the ground. We have the groundcover version of Portulacaria afra and also Dymondia
This sort of thing has never bothered me, as long as the lawn is maintained to a level that it does not overgrow and become a home for ticks, rodents, noxious weeds, and that sort of thing. Clover is inoffensive and green.
Concerns about “vermin”, while not applying to clover lawns, have been expressed about natural-style landscape alternatives to lawn. There’s evidence they mostly reflect myths.
Yes, ticks live very happily in tidy monoculture lawns.
I think the maintenance issue is more about people who switch to not-grass and then stop doing maintenance. Certainly people can not maintain their grass lawns, but that’s rare. Pretty much everyone mows their grass every week or so. But with not-grass yards, sometimes people just give up maintenance. They only do something when things get out of hand. Someone with a clover lawn may be unknowingly signing up for more maintenance than they realize. Some people won’t do the extra work, so their not-grass yard becomes more of an eyesore than if it was just grass. Around here people switch to xeriscaping, but often they don’t keep up the maintenance. It looks great at first, but weeds and leaves soon are all over their yard for long periods of time. I don’t mind not-grass lawns in principle, but I do mind when the owners think they no longer have to do yard maintenance since they no longer have grass.
I live in an older neighborhood that is surrounded by a newer development with one of those HOAs. We lovingly refer to our ‘hood as ‘the servants’ quarters’ and pretty much anything goes here. Older homes, no uniformity, and property values still about 10% higher than the ‘nice’ places surrounding us. Delicious schadenfreude. Anyway, I’m ‘this’ close to selling the missus on clover, since the north-facing slope and spruce trees in the front yard allow for anything but grass to grow well. Needless to say, if a neighbor did it I would have no negative thoughts at all.
Which is a challenge since IMO / IME the motivation for removing grass is almost always “Now I won’t have to do (or pay for) any yard maintenance.” And if xeriscape, “Now I won’t have to pay for expensive watering.”
There may be a growing awareness in the last decade-ish by folks who care about the eco-value of avoiding water-intensive monoculture turf. But there are one hell of a lot more people that care nothing about those issues and merely want cheap and lazy.
Great Cite!