It's About Thyme: Get Rid of that Lawn!
Charles Maass is a Civil Engineer living in Manhasset on Long Island. He grew up in this lawn and tree-loving community, where he now lives with his wife and two sons. His interests include reading and triathlon training. Most importantly, he has always hated his turf grass lawn, and finally replaced it with a beautiful carpet of creeping thyme. Here he writes about the how and why of the process …
I have always hated my turf lawn.
When I did not use a lawn service to put chemicals on it, it looked embarrassingly bad. When I used this lawn service, I felt guilty about it and it still did not look that great. In the end I decided to cancel both my lawn service and my landscaper and use this money to re-wild my front lawn.
The first time
After doing much on-line research, I chose to replace half of my front lawn with Red Creeping Thyme in the spring of 2019. I liked its height (2”), the fact that it can tolerate moderate foot traffic, is drought resistant, spreads fast and chokes out weeks and attracts bees and butterflies. After visiting local garden centers, I found creeping thyme at Hicks that was supplied by a company called Jeepers Creepers. Luckily I found their mail order website, http://www.jeeperscreepersusa.com/, where I purchased the plants for less than $2 each and bought about 300 of them. Using just a shovel, I proceeded to dig up my lawn and plant all of them about 15” apart over the course of two weeks or so. I was in good shape, but found it to be physically taxing.
I lost a couple of these new plants during a heat wave and I weeded often, but by the end of the year, they had grown quickly and filled in the gaps better than I expected. I was worried that they would lose their leaves over the winter so I was pleasantly surprised when the leaves stayed in place and turned an interesting, dark purplish color.
the second time around
By the time the next spring came around, I was excited to plant the other half of my lawn. I purchased about 400 plants and used 20 of them to fill in some gaps from the 2019 planting. This time I was smarter and covered the grass with cardboard (until I ran out and used newspaper) and 2” of mulch during the last week in February.
By the end of April, the grass lawn that I so hated was dead.
This time I did not need to dig up all of the grass as I just punched through the cardboard every 14” with 2” diameter holes for the new plants. The other advantage of this method is that the cardboard and mulch do a great job of controlling the weeds well after the planting… I have only needed to pull out isolated weeds here and there.
More good news came in June when the thyme that I had planted last year developed thousands of mini-flowers with a stunningly bright purple reddish color. I placed a picture of these flowering plants in one of the Manhasset Facebook sites and had 86 likes and 12 comments within 24-hours.
I am already looking forward to June of 2021 when the whole yard should flower together and when I expect there to be only minimal gaps between all of the plants. I also expect that the thyme will be mature enough by then that I can stop watering… I already have stopped using chemicals now that the grass has been replaced.