Please suggest alternatives to a front lawn

[whywonttheyeattheirfood]

We've lived in the house for around a decade and the front lawn is causing me a bit of a headache.

It's a new build and they didn't put proper topsoil down in the gardens, so the soil quality is poor - it's mainly clay with rubble underneath. We are managing to grow stuff by adding topsoil and peat and fertiliser, but it's still a challenge. It does get windy in the front as it's fairly open plan with no fences.

We have a dandelion problem on the estate, with dandelions pretty much taking over people's gardens if they don't keep on top of them - many don't have the time etc. I recently found out that dandelions give off a chemical which inhibits growth in neighbouring plants (great 🙄). My next door neighbours (non gardeners) have both had their back lawns destroyed by the dandelions and there is no grass left at all in one garden 😱

My front lawn consists of - some grass, couch grass, dandelions, buttercup, clover and some creeping/stringy things. I don't mind the clover of course, but the rest looks a mess. I'm losing the battle to maintain a lawn whilst getting older and struggling to look after it - expense, stress etc.

I have four small fruit trees in the garden and they're doing okay. We keep them trimmed and tidy. I have one small flower bed and some containers. The front garden gets very dry and hot in the summer. I have a box hedge along the front, with some gravel which is fine.

What I'd like to do is create a herb wheel and lay a short path with pavers. This would still leave some lawn. I plan on laying membrane and pebbles around the herb wheel and in some awkward areas where the lawn is messy.

What is left over, I plan on planting some ground covering shrubs and grasses. Please could anyone suggest some which are hardy, non spreading (non rhizome grasses) and don't need lots of water in the summer. I need to keep the weeds down so things which will be close to the ground and minimise weed growth. I'm particularly interested in grasses as I like those.

Has anyone got any suggestions for plants? I'm also planning on some largish rocks to add landscaping, but the soil isn't suitable for any alpines.

I'm doing similar with my back garden but got rid of the lawn completely. Now there's a wide gravel path going round where the lawn was. I 'm keeping the border planting.

The dug up lawn has hard compacted clay about 4 inches down only on the areas we used to walk though so I can still do some planting.
I'll be mulching everywhere with spent mushroom compost to try and sort the clay problem.

Rosy Hardy's videos on Youtube have been really useful. The most recent has good ideas for what to plant to reduce watering..

In your place, I would get rid of the lawn completely, otherwise you’ll find it takes longer to get the mower out and put it away than it does to mow. In my first garden I dug up the front garden and designed a parterre to fit. I had a rose in the centre and a couple of roses up the house, then the rest I filled with Mediterranean herbs and similar - rosemary, lavender, oregano, winter savory, sage, different types of thyme, hyssop with its intense blue flowers. And probably several mints and some chives, though the mints won’t like dry conditions.

It was an absolute delight to weed, with a different scent every time you shuffled forward.

I would be inclined to pave with some inoffensive neutral paving, then treat yourself to some really nice, large containers that you can fill with decent soil - and/or invest in some raised beds. The you can take tips from pps about heat-tolerant plants and herbs. You might even manage an olive tree if you're far enough south?

(The existing fruit trees shouldn't mind the paving so long as it is installed carefully ie a good space left round the trunks, and minimal digging close to them. It should stay nice and cool and damp under the stones)

Gravel/stones etc look nice to begin with but I think they have to be laid on weedproof (you hope!) membrane and in the end the membrane peeks through and frays and looks horrible IMO. With paving as it ages the worst you get is a few more weeds and/or moss. I have quite a lot of jolly flowers like marjoram, valerian and aquilegia growing out of the cracks in my paving!

I had a garden that was paved at the centre and beds all around the edge and it was the prettiest garden I've ever had. My current one is just too big to get coherent IYSWIM.

These descriptions of the gardens sound so pretty 🥰

We can't get rid of all the grass as it'll be too big a job as dh is knocking on and it'll be too much for me alone as I'm not very strong. We can't afford to get anyone to do it. Young adult ds says he'll help me though. I think I'll start with the herb wheel and see how that goes. Getting rid of the turf is the most difficult part because it's so heavy then we'll have to lug it up the recycling centre.

Depending upon how much grass is left, I have a handheld hedge trimmer that I can trim small areas of grass with and hopefully the mower won't be needed as such. I can't wait to get some shrubs. I want some evergreen ones too.

The cost of large stones/boulders though 😱 I'll go onto FB marketplace and try to get some cheaper ones I think. Pavers around the trees sound like a good idea.

I'm hoping for this sort of thing with the herb wheel. I made a small one in my last house, but it needs to be a bit bigger really.

Stripping turf isn’t too bad a job. Use a spade jabbed in to about 10cm to cut the areas in strips a spade width wide, then cut across every 40cm. The top few centimetres of soil is matted with roots, but it’s clear under that , so you can place your spade underneath and wiggle the strip free. You can adjust the length of-the strip to what you can lift easily.

If you can help it, don’t take the turf to the tip. Stack it upside down somewhere and in a year or so it will break down to lovely soil.

I have a similarly rubbish lawn and am going to try Heath Pearlwort. Try next year, anyway, as it'd cost a fortune to buy ready-grown plants. (Too late now to plant seeds and grow my own).

https://www.victoriananursery.co.uk/Heath-Pearlwort-Lawn/

Do you have a biggish back garden with an out-of-the way corner with enough space for a pile of turves? If so, take the turf off the front, and lay it upside down in a pile up to a metre high, then cover it completely with cardboard, then black sacks over the top of that held down all round the edges to keep all light out. Leave for two years, and it will rot down into compost.

Take out the dandelion roots first if you can though😂

I ripped up the patchy front lawn and replaced it with gravel paths and a mix of hardy perennials, herbs, and some low-growing thyme between stepping stones. It looks much better year-round and doesn’t need mowing.

I got the idea from some landscaping in Pompano Beach I saw online—lots of drought-tolerant plants and clever use of space without making it look too “desert.”

I've got the same situation OP - new build with lots of builders rubble and turf.

I'm planning on doing no dig to get rid of lawns. Have a problem with mares tail so it's not ideal but hard landscaping to dig out beds is so expensive. Already have a couple of beds and so raised beds would look weird infront

I’d throw down some clover seed from Amazon and create a clover lawn. That’s what I’m doing. Lush green even with the crap new build soil and the bees love it. Still green even though it’s not rained for ages and doesn’t need cutting as much.