[olliewagner]

Just to shill for bee friendly lawns: I have a creeping thyme lawn that I would recommend entirely. It attracts tons of bees, butterflies, doesn’t need mowing but once a year (to clean up the spent flowers which are lovely in the summer), is drought tolerant (I water once every 2 weeks), and is evergreen to boot!

[core-questions]

Would you mind posting a picture? My lawn is this delightful combination of grasses and local weeds that is simultaneously uncomfortable to walk on, and also tremendously unaesthetic no matter what I seem to do. Wouldn't mind power-raking it up and putting down something better one of these years, but don't want to just do something conventional if there's a truly better option.

[olliewagner]

No problem! https://imgur.com/a/ejSaUen

[core-questions]

Very cool. So how did you make this happen? Nuke the lawn, fresh soil, and seeds?

[olliewagner]

I didn’t have to amend the soil. Thyme actually does well in poor soil conditions! As for planting you’ll have to buy plugs if you want consistency. These varieties if grown from seed won’t necessarily be true to form.

[noob_slayer]

creepy

[dang]

We've banned this account for posting unsubstantive comments and ignoring our request to stop. Continuing like this will get your main account banned as well, so please don't.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[el_benhameen]

This sounds great! What sort of climate are you in? And may I ask if you (or anyone else here who has done this) has kids? I would love to replace or supplement my lawn with clover or thyme, but I’m a little concerned that I’d be asking for my kids’ feet to get stung.

[olliewagner]

I'm in Albuquerque (zone 7). I'm not sure this is a great kid lawn because while it will hold up to foot traffic, it might get kind of torn up if kids are running around on it a lot.

[pcdoodle]

That pic is awesome, did you plant from seed?

[olliewagner]

No, these were all planted as plugs. Each variety of thyme must be propagated via cutting as the traits of that variety are not guaranteed if grown from seed.

[Alex3917]

What does the climate need to be like for this to work? I've seen it done very nicely in the Adirondacks, but I haven't seen it within NYC.

[EdwardMSmith]

Zone 5 from what I can find. Would not survive in MN.

[jcl]

It's a little surprising that the article itself calls out creeping thyme as one of the bee-friendly candidate plants for MN, then, as does the article it ultimately sources from:

https://www.startribune.com/program-pays-minnesota-homeowner...

Perhaps there is a hardier variety? Or maybe they're expecting people to just plant fresh each spring?

[vitaflo]

Live in MN and have creeping thyme in our yard (was planted in our perennial garden and creeped). It grows very well here.

[beat]

Creeping thyme works fine in the Twin Cities metro, at least. It grows very well in our yard, and it's all over our neighborhood.

We also have a big bunch of yarrow planted in our hellstrip. It grows great in those tough conditions. We don't even water it, and it's always full of bees and other bugs.

[azertykeys]

Can confirm - TC metro area is great for our thyme. It's certainly crept and spread :)

[asdkhadsj]

Whoa, now I want to do this. It sounds amazing! How many varieties can be used in this manner?

[olliewagner]

Tons. https://www.mountainvalleygrowers.com/Thyme.htm

I have Pink Chintz, but if I had to do it again I'd probably go with Pink Lemonade (grows faster) mixed with Caraway (culinary)