Flowering lawns and herb lawns: the low maintenance alternative

At the end of July you see the same pattern on almost every lawn. The grasses have gone strawy and lie flat, and in among them sit a few patches that are still deep green. Usually that is clover. Sometimes yarrow. Almost always they are exactly the plants that the spring lawn feed was supposed to drive out.

That is the whole idea behind a flowering lawn, or herb lawn: stop working against those species and start working with them. A surface made of grasses plus low, tread tolerant flowering plants. Children can play on it, the surface only needs to go under the blade every few weeks, and from May to September there is always something in bloom on it.

So let us take it in order: what makes this surface different from a wildflower meadow, which species survive both footfall and the mower, how you sow one from scratch or overseed into what you already have, and what you give up permanently in return.

Flowering lawn, herb lawn, wildflower meadow: what each one actually means

The trade throws these terms around interchangeably, but there are genuinely different surfaces behind them.

This is not a matter of taste, it is a decision about your time. A flowering lawn turns roughly twenty mowing dates into four to six, and the surface stays usable. A wildflower meadow saves you even more work, but it costs you the use of the space. If you want both, split the garden up: meadow at the back, flowering lawn at the front. How the meadow half works is covered in Turning a lawn into a wildflower meadow.

The species that genuinely survive footfall and the blade

The filter that matters is not whether a plant is pretty. It is whether it grows flat and keeps its growing point down near the ground. Anything that carries its shoot upwards gets beheaded at the first cut and is gone within two years.

White clover (Trifolium repens) is the engine of the whole surface. It creeps along on runners, roots again at every node and closes gaps faster than any grass can. Through the nodules on its roots it pulls nitrogen out of the air and passes it on to its neighbours, which replaces a good part of any feeding programme.

Daisies (Bellis perennis) sit as flat rosettes right down on the soil, so the blade passes straight over the top of them, and in mild spots they carry on flowering into December.

Creeping thyme, also sold as wild thyme (Thymus serpyllum), is the luxury item for sunny, hungry patches: flat cushions that release their scent when you walk over them barefoot. Buy it under the botanical name if you can. The label "wild thyme" also gets stuck on broad leaved thyme, which copes better on decent soil but grows taller. And do not confuse either of them with the culinary thyme in your kitchen, which grows upright and stands no chance in a lawn.

Bird's foot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus) brings the yellow from June to September and feeds the caterpillars of several blue butterfly species. Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) roots deeply and is still standing green when the ryegrass has long since gone brown. Selfheal (Prunella vulgaris) flowers purple into September and flattens itself under the blade.

What does not belong here, on the other hand, is red clover. At first glance it looks like its white cousin, but it grows upright and in clumps rather than creeping. Every cut takes its flowers away, and after two years it has gone. In a flowering lawn the white clover does the work; red clover belongs in the meadow.

For shade and damp corners

Not every lawn sits in full sun. Under the apple tree and along the north side, other species take over: ground ivy creeps through dappled shade as a dense carpet and is already flowering in April, and bugle puts up its blue flower spikes in May.

In a conventional lawn both count as a problem, precisely because they spread by runners. In a flowering lawn that is their job. You will rarely need to sow them at all, they turn up on their own.

The soil decides who wins

Nearly everything you do on this surface, or deliberately stop doing, works through a single lever: the nutrient level in the soil. That is what sets the ratio of grass to herb, and it does so far more reliably than any seed mixture.

What nitrogen does to the grasses

Grasses are nitrogen users. The more nutrient sits in the soil, the faster they grow, and the more thoroughly they shade out everything that stays flat. On well fed ground the grasses win every race.

On poor, free draining ground the balance tips the other way. The grasses stay open and patchy, light reaches all the way down, and creeping thyme, bird's foot trefoil and selfheal get their space. A pH between 6 and 7.5 suits most of these species.

If your soil is rich, you can starve it down: take the clippings off consistently instead of mulching, every single time, for years. Sand speeds it up. In spring or late summer spread 5 to 10 litres of washed quartz sand per square metre, grade 0/2, which comes to a layer of 5 to 10 mm, and work it in with a rake. The tips of the grass and the flat rosettes have to stay visible above it, otherwise you smother the very species you are doing this for. Repeat two or three years running. If you are starting a new area from scratch, strip off the top 10 to 15 cm of topsoil straight away and replace it with a mix of sand and poor subsoil. That takes the two or three sand years off you completely, and the topsoil you removed goes onto the vegetable beds.

Sowing from scratch, step by step

Two windows work across the German speaking region. Spring, from early April to mid May · CW 14 to 20, as soon as the soil is reliably at 8 to 10 °C; in harsher districts that is not until late April. And late summer, from early August to mid September · CW 32 to 38, when the soil is still warm and the autumn rain takes the watering off your hands. That autumn window is opening right now, we are in CW 31.

1. Clear the area and loosen it

   If couch grass or ground elder are in the area, do not rotavate: the blades chop the runners up and multiply both of them. In that case strip the sward off instead, or cover the area a season in advance with cardboard or light proof sheeting. Repeated shallow rotavating is only an option where there are no running weeds. After that, loosen the top 10 cm only. Do not dig deep, or you bring buried seed back up to the surface.

2. Starve it rather than feed it

   No compost, no starter fertiliser, no hoof and horn. On heavy soil the rule is all or nothing. A little sand mixed into clay does not make the soil poorer, it only compacts it, because the grains fill the pores in the clay. If you do it, go for at least half sand in the mix, so roughly 10 cm of sand worked into the top 20 cm, then rake level and roll.

3. Let it rest for two to three weeks

   The step most often skipped. During this time the first flush of weed seed germinates and you hoe it off shallowly. Without that round, your young sowing gets swamped.

4. Sow, then only press down

   Around 10 to 15 g per square metre, roughly half the 20 to 25 g you would use for a utility lawn; the manufacturer's figure on the packet takes precedence. It feels like far too little as you spread it, and that is deliberate: only an open, patchy sward lets light through to the herbs. Halve the portion and go over the area once lengthways and once across. Do not rake it in, most of the herbs need light to germinate. Roll it instead, or press it down with a board, so the grass seed makes proper contact with the soil.

5. Keep it damp for four weeks

   The top layer must not dry out, so in summer warmth that means a fine spray once or twice a day. The low growing grasses take their time: browntop bent germinates after 10 to 14 days, red fescue needs 14 to 21 days, and smooth meadow grass and many of the herbs only come after three or four weeks. Bird's foot trefoil has a hard seed coat and often does not appear until the second year. An empty looking patch after ten days is completely normal and no reason to sow again.

6. First cut at 10 cm

   Take it back to 6 to 8 cm with a sharp blade, so the young plants get cut rather than torn out.

The seed or turf question is largely settled here. Conventional turf is a pure grass sward on fed substrate, and it fits neither the species list nor the hungry site you are aiming for. Herb turf and pre grown herb mats do exist in the specialist trade these days; they cost several times as much, but you can walk on them straight away. The weighing up for the conventional case is in Laying a lawn: seed or turf.

Overseeding into the existing sward

This is the route most people take, because nobody digs up their garden for an experiment. It takes two to three years to reach the finished picture, but it costs almost nothing.

1. Stop feeding a year in advance

   The conversion starts with leaving something out. As long as lawn feed keeps going down, every overseeding is wasted effort. What that means across the year is in Feeding a lawn through the seasons.

2. Pick the right date

   The windows are tighter than for a fresh sowing, because the seedlings have to compete with established grasses: late August to mid September · CW 35 to 38, or late April to mid May · CW 18 to 20, in both cases with soil temperatures above 10 °C. We are in CW 31, so you have roughly four weeks of lead time before overseeding. Sow in high summer and you are sowing for the birds. The established grasses will pull every drop of water away from the seedlings.

3. Mow short and pull the thatch out

   Down to 2 to 3 cm, clippings off, then get the thatch out of the sward with a rake or, as a one off, with a scarifier. That single outing is allowed; after it the machine goes away for years.

4. Open up gaps

   Herb seed only germinates on open soil. Drag the rake through hard, criss cross, until bare earth shows in places. Around 20 to 30 per cent open ground is the target.

5. Sow thinly

   For pure herb seed, 1 to 2 g per square metre is plenty; for a complete mixture, 5 to 8 g. You are filling gaps, not laying a new surface. Mix the fine seed with dry sand at one part to ten and it spreads evenly. Press it down, do not rake it in.

6. Protect it and keep it damp for three to four weeks

   The top layer must not dry out, so in warm weather that means a fine spray daily. This is the point at which most overseedings fail. Keep off it as far as you can, and only mow once the grasses are back up to 10 cm. Then straight to 6 to 8 cm and no lower.

The mowing: four to six times a year at 6 to 8 cm

A rough rhythm: late April · CW 18, early June · CW 23, mid July · CW 29, late August · CW 35, and the last cut in early October · CW 41. There are five to six weeks between those dates, not seven days.

The cutting height is 6 to 8 cm and no lower. Below that you lose the herbs, because their leaves get taken off with everything else, and the grasses respond to the stress by growing back all the faster. In dry spells leave it at the full 8 cm, since the longer blade shades the soil.

And then the step that really counts: the clippings come off the surface every time. Cuttings left lying rot down and hand their nutrients straight back, and those are exactly what you are trying to get rid of. Onto the compost heap with them, or use them as a mulch under the soft fruit bushes.

What stops from now on

No lawn feed. Neither mineral nor organic, neither in spring nor in autumn. The nitrogen goes almost entirely to the grasses, and every application costs you herbs. The white clover tops it up by itself.

No scarifying as an annual ritual. The machine slices open creeping species such as ground ivy, bugle and white clover and tears them out of the sward. The one exception is the single pass before overseeding.

No selective lawn weedkiller and no combination product of feed and herbicide. These work against broadleaved plants, which means against everything that is meant to flower.

No robot mower running permanently. Even set to 6 to 8 cm the problem stays: it runs continuously, no flower ever gets as far as setting seed, and the clippings stay put as mulch and feed the ground. Then there are hedgehogs: they are protected in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and dusk and darkness are exactly when they are out. A robot mower belongs on the bright part of the day, quite apart from any flowering lawn. Best of all, take the flowering area out of its working zone altogether.

No liming on suspicion. Lime supplies no nitrogen, but it shifts the pH, and the pH has a say in who wins. The catch is that it does not improve things for everyone: white clover and bird's foot trefoil are legumes and like it limier, creeping thyme decidedly does not, it avoids lime and wants acidic sand. On top of that, lime on light soils speeds up the breakdown of humus and releases nitrogen while it does so, which goes straight back to the grasses, the exact opposite of what the whole surface is aiming at. That makes lime a corrective for a measured value, not a routine job. Only put it on if a soil test shows a pH below 5.5, and even then only where clover is meant to be the leading species.

Tread tolerance: what the surface will really take

This is where too much tends to get promised. A flowering lawn is walkable, and that is the difference from a meadow. What it is not is a sports pitch.

What works: children playing. A blanket and chairs at the weekend. The trip to the washing line twice a week. A game of football in summer. Daisies, white clover and greater plantain are among the most tread tolerant plants there are, and they grow along the edges of farm tracks for precisely that reason, because that is where people walk.

What does not work: the daily trip to the bins along the same line, a trampoline that stands in one spot all summer, or frequent walking on wet ground, because the sward compacts and the herbs are the first thing you lose. For cases like those you lay stepping stones. That is not a compromise: the path stays dry and the surface beside it gets to flower in peace.

A flowering lawn is not a surface you lay once and then simply have. It shifts over the years. In the third summer there is suddenly selfheal standing where there was nothing but grass before, and the thyme on the sunny slope spreads another hand's width every summer. If you note in your garden journal when you mowed and what has newly appeared, you can see that development in black and white after three years, and by late summer you know exactly which corner still needs a handful of seed.