Crocus & Clover

Want a more natural lawn that can still stand up to activity? Ask a backyard expert.

BY ISAAC HAMLET

“In environmental circles, lawns often times get a bad rap,” observed Fred Meyer, director of Backyard Abundance. The Iowa City-based nonprofit, founded in 2006, is dedicated to helping individuals connect with and appreciate nature.

Grass lawns offer little environmental benefit, reduce biodiversity and don’t do anything for local pollinators. That’s made traditional lawns a contested topic in environmental discussions.

While Meyer conceded that grass lawns don’t generally offer much, he pushed back against negative perceptions.

“[Lawns] often look nice and hold space really nicely,” he said. “I think what needs to be more communicated is that lawns need to be part of a larger whole, so making them more purposeful is how people benefit the most.”

Appearances aside, Meyer also said that the turf grass comprising most lawns in America is often the best option for those who want to use their space for sports like bocce ball, badminton and croquet.

“All of those things require a lawn,” he said. “I get a lot of questions about what good grass on the path to a more environmentally friendly lawn is a literal seed. edible (though they’d probably serve you better as components for tea than the center of a full meal). alternatives for lawn activities are and honestly there aren’t good alternatives for active sports.”

While plants like creeping thyme offer alternatives to grass in low activity areas, there are plants that stand-up much better to the foot traffic of sports. Meyer’s first recommendation is the Dutch white clover (Trifolium repens), a little flower that often shows up among four leaf clovers.

So, speaking with Little Village, Meyer shared some tips on how to make your traditional grass lawn more environmentally friendly.

According to Meyer, the first seed to plant

“This will attract pollinators like bees … [and] it’s a nice nitrogen fixer, it pulls nitrogen out of the air and feeds that to the turf grass,” Meyer said, noting that it’s also fairly inexpensive. “By adding this clover to the lawn, that can actually feed the lawn naturally with the nitrogen that’s flowing in. It’s also drought tolerant.”

Also drought tolerant is the violet (Viola), which Meyer suspects pulls fewer pollinators than Dutch white clover, while still attracting some. Also noteworthy is that both Dutch white clovers and violets are considered

Two other plants to consider when diversifying your lawn are self-heal, or woundwort (Prunella vulgaris), a Midwest flowering herb also popular among pollinators, and crocus (Crocus)—a perennial flower in the iris family that blooms in the spring.

“These spring ephemera gobble up those nutrients, and when they start dying in late summer they re-release those nutrients,” Meyer explained.

All of these plants, from clover to crocus, Meyer noted, not only survive foot traffic well but can survive being mowed, so long as the mowing occurs at about 4 inches: a height which Meyer said is also typically better for the grass still occupying the yard.

“Grass is still going to be the dominant plant … you’re going to see 70-80 percent of [the yard] still being grass.”

The second step for sporting folks working on their lawns is to designate a space. If you know there’s a particular area that you want to use for a particular sport, you can make sure that, whatever else you might do in your yard, you have space preserved for that.

Red or yellow twig dogwood shrubs can be a great way to attract birds to the area, and fruit trees or berry bushes can be planted for those who’d like to foster food in their yard. These can also help create a sense of enclosed space around a yard.

“If people want to support habitat for pollinators or birds, or they want to [garden] ... they can surround that recreational area with these additions that would promote those other practices,” Meyer said. “While they’re playing badminton they could enjoy birds … they can nibble on a cherry if they want.”

Meyer also emphasized the importance of general lawn care, starting with ensuring your mower is set for the highest cutting height possible.

“Mow high the first mowing of the year … The next thing to do is aerate, then the ideal thing to do is get some of that seed that I mentioned, spread it and then spread compost over everything,” he said. “That’s the best sequence for people wanting to enhance their lawn this spring.”

While mowing should happen regularly, every week or two, Meyer estimated that while ”you can aerate and compost up to three or four times per year, if the lawn is really struggling,” you can keep a lawn healthy by doing so just once or twice annually.

Meyer made note as well of an initiative called Your Best Lawn, a partnership between the City of Iowa City, the cities of Coralville and North Liberty and the Iowa Department of Natural Resources which reimburses homeowners who want to make their lawns greener through soil restoration. That reimbursement goes as high as 50 percent (not exceeding $2,000) of the cost incurred (when using approved contractors). Clean Water Iowa funds similar programs to improve soil health with partners across the state.

Above all of this, though, Meyer believes that those who are looking to make changes in their lawns are doing so because they know they’ll enjoy both the process and the space they create.

“You’ve got to enjoy it. If you don’t like doing this stuff—don’t do it,” Meyer said. “We want our landscapes to be enjoyable. We don’t want them to be tugging at you … We’ve got plenty of guilt and shame to go around about how we are impacting our environment. Let’s not do it in our own backyard.”

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