Wish I Could Just Pave The Darn Thing!
 

I have a lot of lawn...I mean A LOT of lawn...to deal with. OK, not acres, but half of one, which I think is worse. If you have acreage, people expect and accept a certain amount of undergrowth. When you're in a subdivision, they expect you to keep the whole thing neatly trimmed and weed free aaaallll the time. :frustrated:

DH and I have half-jokingly tossed around the idea of paving the front lawn, at the very least. Another thought was to replace the socially acceptable grass with clover.

Has anyone else done this? What are the pros/cons? (BTW, I don't think having thousands of bunnies on my lawn as a "con".)

There's a house one block over where they've pulled up all the grass and made their whole front lawn into a rock garden. Not a bad idea, but you're still pulling weeds all the live-long day, which is what I'm trying to avoid.

What other low-maintenance, non-sod options are there?

Hey Writing4fun there are 2 people in my neighbourhood that have removed their grass and replaced it with stones. The one has had it for a few years and honestly it looks great. I initially thought you would be pullig out weeds all the time but it appears they used alot of landscaping fabric and the covered it with the terra cotta coloured stones.

The 2nd person did basically the same thing but I really like the 2nd one better. They did a canadian flag with the reddish orange stones and white ones. It is raised up like a flower bed and it i s higher on one side so you can see the design from the sidewalk/road.

I dont like the clover idea although the bunny idea is interesting :laughing::laughing:.

If you google something like stone front lawns and then select images on google youll see some ideas. :thumbs up

Good Luck and if you do it we must see pics!!!

We have clover mixed in with our grass as it's much more drought tolerant. We still have to mow it. Even the special golf course clover which is very low growing has to be maintained and mowed.

We have other ground covers that don't need to be mowed but they are in borders and we don't walk on them. One border is a mixture of periwinkle and sweet woodruff. Occasional walking on by the dog hasn't hurt it. And, yup you're right, rock gardens are a lot of work to keep weed free. Both periwinkle and sweet woodruff can become rather invasive. Be sure you research your ground covers thoroughly if you think of going that way.

I am not so happy with my front lawn cause it's under huge spruce trees. So the needles kill the grass. Been wandering the same thing. Those lawn companies don't help either.

[QUOTE=Marty11;1062289]I am not so happy with my front lawn cause it's under huge spruce trees. So the needles kill the grass. Been wandering the same thing. Those lawn companies don't help either.[/QUOTE]

Hmmmm....maybe I just need to replace my ginormous maple with a bunch of spruce trees... ;)

Thanks Winston! I'll have to google that and see what we can see. Honestly, at this point, astro-turf is starting to sound like a great idea! LOL!

My parents had the rocks placed on their lawn on top of heavy black plastic. It lasted quite a while, but then the plastic started to shred, and weeds came through. We decided to take it all out, and what a mess. We're still picking up stone, stuck in the ground, with the lawn mower. Wouldn't recommend it.

Oh dear, people did that in town when the drought was on here, lindapalm. I'll bet they're regretting it too.
This photo shows maybe less than a sixth of the area I have to mow, and no, none of it is beautiful lawn, but grass seeing we are in the country. When we only had the house dam to rely on for water you would never make the grass , or a lawn I should say, stay green all Summer, and now we have the pipeline you wouldn't have the money to pay to do it either. So, I mow all this grass just to make it fire safe. Eventually it dies off once we get hot weather. Must go finish the nature strip now, which is maybe this much again, but not so long.

That lawn look a lot better than my lawn. We have a new company managing our condo and the guy had grass seeds put down . I called the guy to see who was going to be watering the seeds as we not going to have any rain for 7 days. The guy told me the morning dew will water the seeds and he had the seeds put down because there was going to be NO rain for a week. The guy came by a week later and looked puzzled as to why the grass has not grown then he water the seeds 2 times thinking that will be enough. More seeds had to be put down because the birds ate some and some animal dug the ground up.. I am being to think it would be best to put some green pavement down instead of having weeds for a lawn , it would be an big improvement. We have bald spots a month later but the weeds are growing like crazy. :wall:

LOL. That guy is not a gardener. That lawn in my photo is not lawn though, just grass. It's an area I mow so in Summer the Power company can get their trucks down to that power pole safely.

[QUOTE=Goldfields;1062355]LOL. That guy is not a gardener. That lawn in my photo is not lawn though, just grass. It's an area I mow so in Summer the Power company can get their trucks down to that power pole safely.[/QUOTE]

You can say that again! He is the manger of my condo and he told the landscaper to put the grass seeds down because there was not going to be any rain for a week. I was what like WT? The grass in your photo look 100% better than our lawn. The weather reporter on the news was telling people to water their lawn if they just put grass seeds down because there was not going to be any rain for a week. I wish he was the manger of my condo.