Creeping Charlie: Enemy or Boon in Your Yard?
Note: Trust me. I'll get to the politics of this later in this post.
I live on a residential street in St. Paul, Minnesota. Made up of homes built soon after WWII, it was and still is home to working families. These days, those families may have last names from all over the planet. But, they're still raising their kids on these quiet streets, just like always. Most of the houses are under 1200 sq. ft. on the main floor, with full basements. Some have been turned into 2400 sq. ft. houses by finishing those basements, but only about half. The houses are 50s and 60s rambler style, usually in entire blocks built by one developer, so they all look a lot alike.
Like many such neighborhoods across the country, each property has a front lawn. For some residents, creating and maintaining a perfect, weed-free lawn of Kentucky bluegrass and fine fescue turf grasses is an important goal. Maybe 20% of the homes in my neighborhood attempt that perfection, with a greater or lesser degree of success. It's hard work and expensive, especially if you hire a landscaping company to keep your lawn looking perfect. It's a choice that some people make.
For other lawns, maybe 60%, regular mowing is about the only real care the lawn receives. These lawns are a mix of grasses, including weed grasses like crabgrass, along with broad-leafed weeds, like dandelions, common violets, plantains, white clover and other weedy things. Right now, yellow dandelion flowers are making a showy splash of color to identify these homeowners. Most will mow before the dandelions go to seed. The 60% lawns look green and lush from a distance, when mowed, but up close, it's quite obvious that they aren't perfect.
Then there are another 20% of lawns in the neighborhood, if you want to call them that. They're LINOs (Lawns In Name Only). They go unmown for weeks sometimes. The dandelions go to seed and other weeds mature and ripen, as well. Eventually, the homeowner fires up the mower and whacks them all down and these lawns look something like the 60% lawns for a while. Often, these owners are working two jobs and just trying to stay on top of mortgage payments. In other cases, they just don't give a damn, and will only mow when provoked to do so by the city or a persistent neighbor.
My lawn? It's one of the 60% lawns. This morning, when I was doing my weekly mowing, I noticed that a patch of the lawn had been invaded by Creeping Charlie. I hadn't noticed it last year, among the many other weeds I mow. But there it is, all pretty little purple tubular flowers and scalloped tiny leaves. "Hmm...," I thought. There were some bees working on the flowers. They like them, along with the white clover and violets already in the lawn. It brought to mind a house a block and a half away, which we pass on our dog walk each afternoon.
That one is a 20% lawn, but all of the grass in the front yard has been replaced over time with Creeping Charlie. The weed has choked out all of the lawn grass. It's actually very pretty as a ground cover and good for the bees. The neglect has led to a rather attractive result, over time. It doesn't need mowing, either. Interesting. A laissez-faire sort of yard.
So, what to do with my Creeping Charlie? Clearly, I'm not in that 20% that insists on a perfect lawn. I don't have the time or energy to do that. I'm also not in the 20% that is willing to let my yard get overgrown and only mow it when there's a threat of action by the city. I'm a 60%er. So, I think I'll just keep mowing weekly and see how the new Creeping Charlie fits into my motley, lawnish front yard. It doesn't look like it will do any harm, and I do like seeing the bees. So, there it will stay.
Politics? Oh, yeah. 20% - 60% - 20%. It's a bell curve, really, just like the lawns in my neighborhood. In the end, the 60% group is the largest group. Most of the lawns near me are in that group. It's pretty much the same in politics across the country. I think it'll probably stay that way, too, regardless of what anyone wants. The 60% ends up dominating the landscape, really.
Thanks for reading!
= new reply since forum marked as read
not an Elm.
So do dandelions until after they've flowered. So do lamium, wild violets and Virginia waterleaf, all of which have more or less taken over my yard. If it flowers it stays. I no longer have any turf grass - it's high maintenance, requiring water, fertilizer and mowing; and it gives nothing back. People started growing grassy yards because the great estates in England had vast expanses of grass upon which to display fountains and topiary and other rich-people stuff. They had servants and sheep to take care of the grass (and no chemicals). We are trying to create little mini-estates with pristine, weedless lawns and it's kind of pointless. If people want a lawn for kids to play on or to have picnics on or whatever, fine - but I wish they wouldn't go nuts with the fertilizers and pesticides (like my next-door neighbor, who hates my wildflowers). If one doesn't fertilize and water so much, frequent mowing (often with noisy, gas-burning power mowers) isn't necessary. A low/no-mow grass has been developed: http://www.stlouispark.org/webfiles/file/public-works/no_mow_grass_fact_sheet.pdf You hardly ever have to mow or do much of anything with it. But flowers are better. 