![]() Many of the weeds were the same plants we have invading grass lawns in the U.S., for example dandelions ( Taraxacum officinale) and plantain ( Plantago major). Very few lawns were grass monoculture perfection. In Switzerland a couple years ago, I was struck by the fact that their lawns tended to be a mix of grass and what I thought of as weeds. ![]() The tension for me is frequently about how much order to impose and how much chaos I can live with. I would prefer a yard that matched the plants in it, where the columbines are welcome wherever they grow (they like my paths) and the speedwell can move in with the creeping juniper. But nature doesn't grow like that and so yard care is a continual battle to keep the edges neat, stop invasion by weeds, etc. ![]() I have an aesthetic that likes monoculture green lawns, linear edges, and the like. We had extensive grass lawns when I was a child. Grass lawn I had once: not well-fertilized but only small weeds. The picture below has the speedwells in bloom (blue-purple area in center of photo) but shows the leaf color well. The rest of the growing season there are small green leaves, or kind of beige tiny seed heads from the smaller thyme (mother-of-thyme). Generally the speedwell flowers first, then creeping thyme, and finally mother-of-thyme. The photo above shows it with one of the two species of thyme in bloom. Those are low creeping plants and I describe the whole as my "thyme lawn." The thyme lawn is spectacular in the spring when the plants flower (purple!). praecox) and Turkish speedwell ( Veronica liwanensis). Advised by a landscape architect, I filled a substantial area, out by the sidewalk, with thymes (creeping thyme Thymus serpyllum and mother-of-thyme T. So much space but for what? One of the best decisions I made was for a thyme lawn. ![]() Filling the space that is a suburban front yard with something other than grass was somewhat of a challenge, however. Now, almost 15 years after making those changes, I can say I haven't missed the grass lawn. ![]()
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