Notes on a clover lawn

With the changing climate and gardens becoming smaller the pressures on the modern-day lawns are growing !! Climate change means that lawns are either very wet or very dry which has a couple of effects firstly the lawn losses its colour in the summer and secondly if your lawn gets a lot of use with children then it’s going to get worn out and not recover quickly.

Faced with these lawn problems a lot of people have opted to install artificial turf or astroturf. Whilst this is a good solution it can be expensive and cause a few unexpected problems for example if you have a dog the smell created by the dog never seems to leave artificial turf as artificial lawns have no bacterial to break down dog waste.

One solution the GardenAdvice teams have been developing over the last few years is to install or over seed an existing lawn with micro clover. This is a clover often found in patches in the lawn but used as a covering plant species it makes a great lawn. Whilst you will lose the striping effect when you cut the lawn clover it will hold its colour in the summer and will recover from wear and damage in a wide range of conditions including wet and dry spells of weather.

Clover also has the additional advantage of producing its own nitrogen feed by teaming up with soil bacteria known as rhizobia which can live in nodules on the clover roots. Rhizobia take nitrogen gas (N2) from the air and convert it through a series of steps into forms of nitrogen (such as ammonium and nitrate) that can be used by clover to support growth and recovery.