Trifolium repens, aka ‘white clover’
For years, we struggled to grow a lush lawn in our backyard. Sod that was installed in 2012 looked OK for a couple years, but became thinner and weaker over time due to the shade from our tall pines and birch. There is also a lot of root competition from the mature trees, so the grass never seemed to get enough water, even though we have an automatic irrigation system.
In the summer of 2016, cotton-tail rabbits suddenly appeared in our neighborhood and promptly began using my perennial gardens as an all-you-can-eat buffet.
By 2018, the rabbits were becoming a serious problem, and the lawn was quite lackluster. So in June, we decided to overseed the lawn with Miniclover® from Outside Pride. Our clover lawn has been a game-changer. In addition to perking up a thin sod lawn that struggled in our shady back yard, our clover lawn is:
easy care
greener than grass
drought tolerant
vigorous without fertilization
starting out with mini clover
Closeup of our mini clover lawn during the summer of July, 2021
When we started out on our ‘clover journey’, we really didn’t know what we were doing, but thought ‘hey, how could this go wrong?’
Luckily, for us, our experiment was a huge success. We decided on ‘mini’ white clover, thinking the tinier leaves would look better than the large leaf clover. We bought 2 pounds of seeds and sprinkled them by hand over our small back yard. We made sure to pre-cut the lawn shorter than we normally would, and we ran that lawn irrigation zone twice daily for a week to keep the seeds moist until germination.
We were excited to see baby clover sprouts in less than 10 days, and by the 3 week mark, we were able to safely mow the lawn. Initially, the sod was still dominant, and we could see where we our hand sprinkling was uneven. But by the second summer, the clover had pretty much taken over. Now, six years later, the grass blades are still present if you look closely, but the overall effect is quite lovely and super soft to walk in.
Clover is quite rugged and has stood up to at least four garden tours in the past five years with a hundred or more people walking on it in the span of a few hours. If it looks matted down, just wait until morning and it will likely have sprung back up and recovered just fine. We don’t have dogs, but our cat, Harry, loved it in his old age.
Plant type: perennial, native to Europe and naturalized in the US
Growing Zone: 3-10
Growing Conditions: part shade to sun
Size: 4-6”, depending upon mowing
Spread: Plants will spread by stolon, making it easy to grow in an existing lawn
Bloom: summer months, if not mown
Foliage: persists into November
Maintenance: none, mow like a normal lawn
Biodiversity: pollen and nectar source for bees, wasps and butterflies
common myth:
Planting clover will attract rabbits to your lawn. Fact is, rabbits are already here and will take an interest in your lawn, clover or not. We find that the rabbits spend most of their meal times in the lawn munching on clover. While they nest and hide and still find my garden to their liking, their browsing of my perennials is dramatically reduced due to the clover lawn.
caring for clover
If you grow clover, you can choose to mow it just like a grass lawn when it grows too shaggy for your taste. I’m always amazed at how beautiful it looks immediately after mowing, because there is always plenty of shorter clover that doesn’t get chopped during mowing. If you let it grow a bit longer than normal, you will be rewarded with beautiful white blooms which support our native bees.
