Your lawn be a mass of white flowers between cuts – maybe this carpet if your signal its time to get the lawn mower out. Clover can be good, and it can be bad… depends on which hat you have on.
White clover is a highly persistent plant, growing in lawns which are showing signs of low fertility – typically lawns which are cut often, have the clippings removed and have little, if any, fertiliser applied can be made up with large quantities of clover… and sometimes very little grass!
You see grass needs fertiliser and nutrients to do well, where fertility levels are low the grass doesn’t do as well, opening up space for the clover to come in and in many cases out-perform the grass.
You can pick up products to remove the Clover from your local garden centre, such as Hytrol Lawn Weedkiller, but if you just simply kill of the clover you may find that there is very little grass left behind. Your first step should be to not remove the grass clippings from the lawn during the summer cutting season, cut the lawn regularly and leave the clippings behind. The clippings left behind will then break down and feed the lawn grass.
Otherwise you can continue to remove the clippings but you will have to purchase some lawn fertiliser from the garden centre to get the grass growing.
So why buy when you can make your own? (I do appreciate that for some the sight of dead grass sitting on their lawn is an unbearable sight and that you may wish to dip into your pocket and buy some fertiliser instead of leaving the grass behind).
As the fertility of the ground increases the grass will start to perform better and the clover will be discouraged naturally. I will argue that a scattering of clover in a lawn is widely beneficial for the many insects that feed on these flowers and a lawn will develop a natural balance between clover and lawn grass to reflect the fertility, so at some times of the year the clover will flourish and in other times it will become less abundant and the grass will perform better.
So in answer to the question ‘Is Clover in a lawn a good thing?’ I would suggest yes, but like all areas of your garden is needs some careful management to get an affect you’re happy with.
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