Susan Harris's blog about eco-friendly and urban gardening, plus the adventures of a DC-based garden writer, coach and occasional rabble-rowser.

Update on Possible Lawn Replacement Plants

May 2, 2009 · 9 comments

{ 9 comments }

1 Yanic A. May 5, 2009 at 5:06 am: What a wonderful looking yard.

I was wondering if you could help me : We have tulips, that are of course very short blooming, and we were wondering what a good ground cover would be to kinda cover the area after spring.

Thank you!

Yanic
2 susan harris May 5, 2009 at 6:43 am: Yanic, have a look at these groundcovers:
http://www.sustainable-gardening.com/Groundcovers/GroundcoversContents.php
3 susan (garden-chick) May 6, 2009 at 8:10 pm: Great video – I like that your choices are all low. A lot of what we’re using a lot of right now in California are grasses, which give more of a meadow effect. This seems more like what people have in mind for a lawn sub.

Did you plant so many varieties as an experiment to determine vigor, or is your design intent to have a mosaic?
4 susan harris May 6, 2009 at 8:19 pm: Susan, good question. I got a bunch of samples from Stepables, some of which have bit the dust already, and the survivors – mainly thymes – are now battling it out with the more vigorous creeping Jenny and Sedum acre for dominance. So using this many plants in this small space wasn’t a design choice but a way to “trial” lots of possibilities. More will be revealed.
5 Linda Keenan May 15, 2009 at 7:51 am: A few years ago, I planted creeping jenny in a “problem area” of my yard, and now creeping jenny IS the problem. It is hard to dig out, especially when it intertwines with plants that you do want to keep, and it has also jumped from the area where it was originally planted and is appearing in other places.
6 Susan Harris May 15, 2009 at 8:01 am: Linda, I totally agree and would never plant creeping Jenny where it can be thuggish toward other plants. But all by itself or with another thug (sedum acre) it’ll fill out and do the job that turfgrass used to do.
Here in this oval-shaped former lawn, it would be easy to edge occasionally to sever the creeping Jenny spreading beyond the oval into the borders.
And you highlight an interesting point: some of the best plants to replace turfgrass ARE thugs – or plants that grow from cheap seed, like clover.
7 Marte Hult May 18, 2009 at 5:39 am: Susan,
I found your video fascinating because I too am trying to eliminate as much lawn as possible. I do have a question about creeping Jenny. Can you give me the Latin name for that? Here I have creeping Charlie, which has a beautiful little orchid-like purple flower but which is the thug of all thugs, completely choking everything out. Since I don’t use pesticides, I spend hours pulling the trailers out by hand. Are we talking about the same plant? Your creeping Jenny looks yellower than my creeping Charlie though.
I have a thyme that is doing very well on the south side of my house. It is thymus serphyllum ‘Magic carpet’ I am in zone 4, but the south side is more zone 5. I look forward to seeing more of the lawn replacement .
8 susan harris May 18, 2009 at 6:03 am: Marte, here’s my website page about creeping Jenny:
http://www.sustainable-gardening.com/groundcover/creepingjenny.html
9 Kerry Moore August 7, 2009 at 1:57 pm: Susan, this is a fantastic update on your lawn replacement experience!