Does anyone have experience transforming their boring lawns into more eco-friendly alternatives?

death to useless lawns!

tips: your neighbours might hate your naturalized garden and native plants and such. "just letting it go wild" might make your lawn look unkempt and might encourage encouching invasive species. you could go for trimmed "whatever" so it still looks cared for but contains many species. For something even lower maintenance, crushed gravel for the majority of the space, then a few easy plants like this . Be aware that taller shrubs and denser plant life means an exponential amount of bugs :D they're cool but maybe plan for zones immediately around the house to be "more human friendly" too.

Wild flower gardens are always nice, but they're not always welcome (boo!) So, putting in some stones and straight lines and other human elements make them more acceptable to other humans. example, the same plants here would be considered nuisance weeds without the border. I hate lawn care as well but I'm also lazy and cheap, so this doesn't always work.

Alternatively, for maximum low care, creeping ground cover species that don't grow tall at all are amazing. Creeping thyme is my personal favourite. Add a tiny fairy house in the middle of the purple flower patch. :D

If your area or your immediate neighbours have super immaculate lawns, find out if they spray pesticides / fungicide / herbicides....that'll limit some of your options if you want herbs and fruit and veggies for example. Maybe don't even pick houses right next to people whose lawns suggest they have sticks up their butts. Lawn with short grass that has a few toys on it is fine: probably just a young family who wants to use a lawn and doesn't want too many bugs.

But if you see grass that's already nearly down to nothing and some guy is actively mowing, so green they look spray-painted, and lawn still immaculate despite an active heatwave, (edit add) and every single blade of grass is exclusively of one species: my suggestion is run don't walk. The seller might be selling because they're getting harassed like crazy by that guy. ask me how I know...

Tip on actually gardening and species to pick : Walk the neighbourhood a bit and get a feel for how people feel, get tips on what grows well in your zone and what "crops" trade well :) Go for easy to care for stuff and ones that stand up to drought and storms and winters well, if you're new. If you're not too too sure if this is for you yet or what your long term plans are, go for showy annuals: you can always decide next year. While you are waiting for your garden, you can practice on house plants, and visit garden centres throughout the year and check out new species to see what strikes your fancy.

These kinds of things work a lot better if you have a very small yard, and if you're in an area that doesn't get a lot of a natural rain. Including the region/climate/USDA Hardiness Zone well also help, as what works in a Florida yard won't work in Arizona or Vermont.

Do you intend to use the space, at all? Either for pets, children, sitting outside with friends, etc.? The biggest downside to alternate ground coverings is that they don't really stand up to any traffic, and often devolve into a splotchy, muddy mess.

You're going to need "some* type of ground covering. Nature doesn't like bare dirt, and what it chooses to populate that dirt with may not be compatible with your preferences (like thistles, poison ivy/oak/etc.).

I have. No regrets, love the clover lawn. Be aware that as much as you can do mechanically right away (dig up existing lawn, seed new lawn etc) that you're working with seasonal/annual growing cycles, so set your expectations accordingly. I got real excited about planting yarrow, daisies and other attractive flowers -- and then I had to put on my grown-up pants and be patient 😤 because it takes a couple of years for some plants to come in. Yarrow for example will give you greenery in year 1, but won't really flower and explode until year 2. Today (year 3) my yarrow is off the chain and I love it.

But it's a time-oriented process -- not necessarily time-intensive, but you are beholden to your plants' life cycles (which, depending on where you are, may also be affected by climate change).

Do your research and make sure you're planting/seeding non-invasive stuff. Local garden groups should have resources on ground covers for your zone that are helpful to pollinators and not invasive to your ecosystem. There are also water-wise options to reduce your water use.

In my zone, I can seed clover, wild strawberry, blue Violet, and Partridge berry. I've seeded 2 corners with violet so far, and I'm trying to figure out how to organize my front lawn so it doesn't give my grass-loving neighbour a heart attack.

You can also use up what would be lawn space with a garden. Most of my back "lawn" is a veggie and herb garden, and the perimeter are all pollinators and low shade trees. In the front, I've planted wild blueberry bushes, and I have plans for other fruit and pollinator beds, and maybe a pear tree. I have medicinal plants like lemon balm and feverfew, and want to try more herbal tea plants. Just don't plant mint variants outside a planter/container!!

Yes! I converted my front yard to almost entirely native plants a few years ago. It's fantastic. I love seeing the huge variety of insects that show up.

If you're going for environmentally friendly, one of the most important things is to use plants that are native to your area. Without knowing your geographic location (but assuming US), the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center is a good resource, although it can be a little overwhelming when you're first starting out.

In more developed areas, you sometimes have to make concessions to aesthetics. That's okay. It's still an improvement over a monoculture lawn.

Worth mentioning it's probably worth looking into if your city/county/state has any incentive programs. My city is encouraging "native species" yards with some reimbursements and whatnot to reduce water use.

I'm in my 4th year of no lawn. Things take time and patience.

First year:

1. Dug up the sod and turn it over. Added some dirt, compost and mulch.and wildflower seeds.
2. Let random weeds grow long enough to ID them. Leave the ones I like to grow or transplant to group them together. Pull the invasive and ones I don't want.
3. Started LOTS of perennial seeds. Keep in mind some won't bloom until the second year.
4. In the fall, I did a lot of strolling in parks and various empty fields for seed hunting. I stored my seeds, labeled and dated, in paper lunch bags for the following spring or went ahead and scattered them in the general area I hoped to see them grow.
5. Also in the fall I did minimal with the leaves. They're free mulch and compost so they were used accordingly.

I have! A year or so back, I dug up my lawn and replaced it with a meadow full of native plants. It only requires yearly mowing, the pollinators and other animals love it, and it has some nice perrenial flowers. I need to throw in some more wild flower seeds to spice it up though.

We decided to let our fenced in back yard go wild. Since it’s behind a privacy fence we don’t have to worry much about the neighbors judging. But we’re also very lucky to live next to a seldom touched wooded area. Almost all of our plants are volunteers from that plot or seeds that I collected locally and spread around, with a couple of plants and seed from local (meaning within my state) specialist native nurseries and our state university’s ag department. It’s weird and messy and awkward looking and quite a few sections still have non native annual weeds or grass, but it seems we’re making okay progress in slowly removing them. We’re also adding borders and a path for more structure.

It feels crazy and pointless at times, and sometimes I want to give up. But most days, we find cool critters or a new species of native plant. Just yesterday we found a HUGE Argiope aurantia spider on one of the natives I planted. And it had a nice sized meal in its web. I hadn’t seen one in years. I was so excited!

Anyways my best advice would probably be to pace yourself and regardless of your methods do it in smaller, more manageable sections. And to remember that it’s a process, which takes time. And of course, it’s a huge learning curve, but don’t let that stop you from having fun with it.

I hope my comment wasn’t too scattered. I’m writing it while super tired.

I've thought about it but I'm not sure it would stand much of a chance against the endless tide of what a local Ranger called "Chinese grass. " No idea what it is but holy hell it's aggressive. So I've sort of compromised by not mowing while local wildflowers are blooming.

Anyone have any specific recommendations for 9b zone? One thing that made it hard for me was I kept getting lost in the sea of possible native replacements and translating those into a specific plan. Like I need to buy X and plant it at Y time of the year, and take care of it for C amount of time before I can ignore it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBaw3DDN-tg

This is one of my favorite examples of letting a yard 'go native' and an inspiration for me personally - if and when i get my own land.

Does anyone have experience with sand-based yards? I want a natural lawn, but nothing I overseed (grass + clover) seem to actually sprout. I don't live in a desert (zone 4 here), so it's not a common enough problem that I've found good drought-happy grasses or ground cover in my local stores. My neighbors all just seem to brute force Kentucky bluegrass by watering and fertilizing the every living daylight out of it. It seems so wasteful to me. Is that really the only option besides bare dirt/sand?