The days of the perfect-looking yard – often lawns that guzzle copious amounts of water to stay green – may soon be gone.
Homeowners are increasingly opting to “re-wilding” their homes, incorporating native plants and decreasing the amount of lawn care to make their properties more sustainable and encourage natural ecosystems to recover, according to Plan It Wild, a New York-based native landscape design company.
About 30% of the water an average American family consumes is used for the outdoors, including activities such as watering lawns and gardens, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In the West, where water is absorbed almost immediately by the sun or thirsty vegetation, outdoor water usage can increase to an average of 60% for the average family.
As concerns for the environment – as well as increasing utility bills – grow, so do homeowners’ preferences for how they decorate their yards.
This is something the wife and I have looked at doing for our next house but is clover less resilient to dogs than grass? We were figuring on natural stuff for the front yard but keeping grass in the majority of the backyard because of our pets
I’ve let the clover from the easement behind our house take over most of our backyard. We’ve got 2 very rambunctious dogs, and the constant trails we’ve always had back there are gone…filled in by either clover or some more robust grass variety that handles it better (. It took a few years for them to fill in completely, but it was worth the wait to not have to try and overseed and pamper them every year.
Clover is better, it grows along the ground instead of straight up like grass So does a couple other kinds of broadleafs that will show up.
With grass if they dig in hard in one place it can kill the grass and then it’s bare, and likely going to stay that way for a while if you mow often. With clover the nearby strands just grow in to the empty space.
Like, if you got some huge dogs in a small yard that pace, it probably won’t matter. But just letting them run around in an open area you’ll be fine.
There will be bunnies back there tho. Even if you have a good fence, they’ll break in for the clover.
Yeah, it’s impossible to keep those little varmints out. Even with a solid fence, my small veggie patch is constantly being invaded by those bouncy thieves.
That’s the 1 downside. This is the first year I’ve ever had to deal with the dogs bringing me bunnies as presents.
The spots that our dogs have destroyed clover, they had destroyed the grass anyway. And that’s under an old magnolia tree where everything struggles anyway. The rest of the back yard is fine.
Our two dogs have been destroying the clover at the same rate of the grass but grows faster back. Just overseed any gap with clover when there are bald or low spots