Clover fields are gorgeous, but societal pressures force people to view it negatively, labeling it as a weed and associating it with lazy homeowners. This pressures people to spend money on the chemicals used to eradicate clover so they aren’t seen as careless. However, having a clover lawn is more responsible than a grass one. While they have a vivid and lush appearance, clover lawns are also easier to maintain, require less resources, and are better for the environment. Clover is more tolerant to heat and drought than grass, attracts pollinators, is resistant to discoloration from pet urine, and fertilizes the soil by transferring nitrogen from the air into the ground. In addition, although grass lawns are often mowed every week, clover only needs to be mowed a few times a year.

Clover looks just as good if not better than grass, especially when it blooms. Different varieties of clover can feature flowers of varying colors, so homeowners can pick their favorite hues if they purchase seeds. While a grass lawn is monoculture, spiky, and often contains patches of yellow dying grass, a blooming field of clover is basically a bed of little flowers spanning in front of a home. 

Believe it or not, clover can even boost immune health. It is soft to walk on, unlike grass, which has sharp blades and often causes irritation. The pleasant walking experience Clover provides encourages “grounding.” As studied by the NIH (National Institutes of Health), grounding is the contact of skin and the Earth’s surface, and affects “inflammation, immune responses, wound healing, and prevention and treatment of chronic inflammatory and autoimmune diseases” in positive ways. The plush carpet of clover encourages grounding, and for those afraid of stepping on bees, clover can be mowed before its flowers bloom, or microclover can be sewn, which produces less flowers than other varieties. 

A grass lawn does not have to be destroyed in order to reap the benefits of clover. Simply integrating clover seeds in a field of grass lets the species help each other, because the clover fertilizes the soil and the grass is more resistant to foot traffic. One man who had spent $200-500 dollars annually on law maintenance stopped watering and spraying herbicides, letting the clover naturally enter and create a blended field.

Clover is better than grass in a multitude of ways: it’s cheaper and easier to maintain, it uses less water, it helps local ecosystems, it has health benefits, and it’s beautiful. It’s easy to introduce clover into preexisting lawns, and a change truly worthwhile to make.

Watching videos about clover lawns is what informed me about how terrible grass is, and it was shocking to me how much better of an option clover is. As a Californian, every drought season I’d notice rows of houses with dying monoculture grass. It looked terrible, and clover requires way less water yet looks a thousand times better than a dead lawn. I have memories of playing on the field with my friends and being annoyed at how uncomfortable the blades of grass felt on our bare feet and the experiments we conducted to try to reduce how itchy our legs became after. Clover lawns just win in every category, and it’s sad that we’ve become convinced that grass is the standard.

I truly adore clover lawns, but get this: there are even more lawn alternatives that are just as good! I plan to cover moss lawns next week, so stay tuned to learn with me!

Kambhampaty, Anna P. “Even Three-Leaf Clovers Can Bring Good Luck.” New York Times, 11 Sept. 2022, p. 5(L). Gale In Context: Opposing Viewpoints, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A716812267/OVIC?u=ante588&sid=bookmark-OVIC&xid=55022602. Accessed 13 Aug. 2023.

https://www.bobvila.com/articles/clover-lawn/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4378297/