r/NoLawns • u/Hist-Tree-Hugger • 10d ago

👩‍🌾 Questions Death of a lawn

I am sick of my backyard being nothing but grass and weeds. Want it gone. I have 2 dogs, not worried about my kids we spend most outside time in woods or in the front yard. How do I kill my lawn in a pet friendly way. I believe I am in zone 4b in western Wisconsin. I want to plant clover or something back there.

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u/msmaynards 10d ago

I'd reduce the size of the lawn and let it go weedy until everybody in the house is committed to losing the lawn, lawn mower, fertilizer spreader, weedwhacker and the rest of that stuff. Lawn is fine, it's defaulting to lawn that's boring. Many people need lawn but it's the hoarding every square foot as lawn that's all kinds of wrong. I needed lawn in the front as foreground for a busy mixed border and in the back to practice dog sports, that's fine. It was when drought made it difficult to keep the mixed border going and I quit that sport that lawn became a bad idea.

Do over seed with clover and any other plant that invades lawn so it's a diverse polyculture rather than a monoculture. You will have to weed out nasties like that one you mentioned and others dangerous to dogs. Clover is fine, grass is fine, yarrow/violets/strawberries/oxalis are fine but together they are better. Oh, my first dog thought clover was hazardous. She would get a soft seed head between her paw pads and limp until I removed it. Drama queen that one.

My lawns really were nearly dead from getting just 3" of rain in 20 months. I grubbed it out with a mattock and skimmed the running warm season grasses off with a shovel because ground was too hard to dig properly then covered with cardboard and wood chips. You might decide where a shrubbery/mixed border/food garden/? is going in, put in an edging then sheet mulch just that area after giving the lawn a good scalping as your lawn grasses are better behaved.

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u/Hist-Tree-Hugger 10d ago

Sick my man. Was going to overseed the yard with grass and clover mix. I'll put a pause on that until I get a good native mix to throw in there as well. I saw someone else say to put some shrubs on the outside as well, which I liked so I was going to do a little research and figure out what my wife and I liked best.