How to Grow a Clover Lawn—and Why You'll Want One

If the grass is always greener in your neighbor's lawn, take a closer look: It might just be a clover lawn instead. While often maligned as a pesky lawn weed, the hardy perennial clover has gotten a major glow up—and now takes on a starring role in many people's lawns.

There are some major benefits to growing a clover lawn—especially if you're someone who doesn't want to spend their weekends mowing, weeding, and applying chemicals to keep your lawn looking fresh. Here's everything you need to know about the latest lawn trend.

What Is a Clover Lawn?

A clover lawn replaces some or all of your existing turf grass lawn with clover, an easy-to-grow perennial that will give you that gorgeous swath of green with minimal effort on your part. You can either reseed new clover into your current grass lawn, or remove the lawn and seed clover instead.

Benefits of a Clover Lawn

Clover lawns have a ton of benefits, from its set-it-and-forget-it maintenance to its benefits for the planet and your own local ecosystem.

A clover lawn is easy to grow

After keeping it well-watered during the first few weeks, you'll find that clover grows and spreads to cover your lawn quickly, and self-seeds to help you maintain that lush look.

A clover lawn is easy to maintain

You can (mostly) put away the mower, sprinkler, fertilizer, and herbicides when you have a clover lawn. The clover doesn't grow tall enough to require much mowing, it's a drought-tolerant plant once it's established, and it actually improves your soil, so there's no need to apply additional fertilizers. As a bonus, it's resistant to common pests and diseases, and it grows thick enough to crowd out most other weeds, so you won't need to apply herbicides or pesticides, either.

Clover improves your soil

Clover is actually a legume. And legumes are among the best nitrogen-fixing plants, which actually feed the soil as they grow. Clover takes in nitrogen from the atmosphere, and bacteria on its roots transforms the nitrogen into something other plants can use and deposits that into the soil. (So planting clover within a turf lawn could help reduce the need to use other fertilizers, too.)

Clover lawns are drought-tolerant

Clover grows deep roots, so they can access water from deeper in the soil—and they tend to stay green, even during extended periods without rain or watering.

Growing clover could help reduce animal damage to your garden

If squirrels, rabbits, and other critters regularly sample from your flower or vegetable gardens, creating a full swath of one of their favorite nibbles could help keep them away from your other plants, says Theresa Rooney, master gardener of Hennepin County in Minnesota and the author of The Guide to Humane Critter Control. "Bunnies would really like to eat clover, rather than anything else in your yard."

Pollinators adore clover

If you want to help keep the bees and butterflies happy, growing a clover lawn provides a sea of blooms they can enjoy.

It's a dog-friendly lawn alternative

Hate those yellowed spots on your dog's favorite spots on the lawn? Clover won't die off where your pooch pees, and it's also a relatively hardy option that can stand up to some puppy play. (And of course, the lack of chemical pesticides and herbicides is also better for your dog as well.)

Clover lawns can be beautiful and blooming

Most people grow white clover or miniclover for their clover lawns, but you can also find clover that has pink, red, or yellow blooms to brighten your landscape.

How to Grow a Clover Lawn

Fortunately, growing a clover lawn is relatively easy to do, whether you want to seed clover into your current lawn or start from scratch with a fully clover-filled lawn.

Choose the right time of year to lay down seed

Just like grass lawns, clover do best when planted when the weather is cooler and rain is more plentiful—generally in the spring when temperatures are regularly over 60 degrees or in the fall.

Prep the soil

Make sure the ground is nice and moist before you plant—either from a soaking rain or a good, long watering session. Rake the dirt or the existing grass lawn to help the seed access the soil.

Put down the seed

Sprinkle the seed over your existing lawn or the soil. You'll need about four to eight ounces of clover for overseeding a 1,000-foot lawn, but you'll need more if you decide to do the lawn fully in clover. (Read your clover seed instructions for amounts.)

Sprinkle topsoil over the seeds

Put a thin layer of topsoil over the seeds to help encourage growth.

Water to establish

Keep the seeds and tender seedlings moist, until the clover looks established—usually a few weeks after planting.

Mow only as needed

If you're mixing clover in with an already established grass lawn, you'll probably still need to mow regularly. But a full clover lawn will only really need to be mowed twice: Once after it blooms in midsummer, and once near the end of the season, about two months before the first frost.

Don't apply herbicides

Most herbicides kill plants that aren't grass pretty indiscriminately—which means that they'll kill off the clover in your lawn.