Clover Lawn Trial

The mere mention of wasting time and money should make everyone question their actions and choose less costly options. Long-term grass maintenance is both time-consuming and financially expensive. This may not pose much of a problem for those with small gardens but for the 22 football pitches worth of estate lawns within the Johnstown neighbourhood it is a significant problem. Local estate groups raise over €50,000 from residents to cut and maintain public lawn spaces - perhaps money better spent on something else?

Also, the growing amount of hard landscaping coupled with lawn space has significantly reduced the number and variety of native long grasses, trees, plants, mosses, algae, lichen, insects, birds, and wildlife. This is often referred to as Biodiversity Loss.  The spaces left to grow wild are under increasing pressure to support this dwindling biodiversity. The repetitively grassed urban spaces with single species, short-height grass lawns produce little food, and no shelter or protection, for any other creatures. For decades society has continued to urbanise more and more rural spaces without changing the design brief for a better environmental balance. 

Households spend time and money feeding, watering, and cutting crops that they can't eat and don't use. Historically the large front lawns belonging to the rich were kept neat and short to display the owner's extreme wealth but they didn't use grass. Although there are over 4,000 varieties of grasses it was low, and slow, growing thyme with chamomile and clover mixed in that formed the original lawns of the mansion estates. Before the advent of the mechanical lawnmower in the 1830s either cattle would graze the display or labourers would spend hours cutting it with scythes. 

Thanks to the wealthy games of golf we now have lush green soft-leaf low grasses, and football helped create hardwearing varieties. Grasses engineered for performance established a multi-billion euro worldwide business replicating this in our homes. Even clover once appeared in lawn seed mixes as a cheaper 'filler' but this was later marketed alongside every other lawn flower as being weeds.

The housing estate developer specifies grass because it has 'curb appeal', is family-friendly, creates flexible use spaces, and it quickly covers the bare ground. Lawns can be grown in fields, arrive at building sites on the back of trucks, and easily unrolled to create instant lawns. Seeded over vast areas grasses quickly establish public green spaces within weeks.

Using clover as a cover crop has several benefits:

• Being part of the pea family it has deep roots to draw up water and therefore tolerates dry periods. 

• It is fast growing and can therefore out-compete other plants. 

• It flowers throughout the growing season and provides food for pollinators. 

• Birds eat the juicy and nutritious leaves.

• Self-seeding clover doesn't need mowing unless you wish to tame the height and level the area. 

• It can grow alongside grasses, or other lawnflowers, improving their growth by fixing nitrogen in the soil. 

• Traditionally clover was included in most lawn seed mixes as it was the cheaper filler when grass seeds were more expensive.

• The clippings can create excellent mulch and compost material.