front yard clover

It always feels a bit humbling when I what I think I know—know intellectually that is—turns out to be only a fraction of reality, reminding me that knowing something and experiencing it are two different things.

Our yard is my most recent example.

Three years ago, concerned about some bare spots in the lawn, tired of constant mowing, and wanting to help the pollinators, we arranged for our suburban lawn to be enriched with some soil enhancers and a bee-friendly mix of seed, applied three times a year. Subtle changes began to appear during the first year. Last year we noticed clover and violets were making a solid foothold. 

But this year has been astonishing. After being encouraged by the nursery not to mow, our “bee lawn” has become a lush, unruly mix of native grasses, many of them blooming profusely already. All spring we’ve been watching as various plants, small in past years, have fully matured, spread widely and bloomed for the first time.

The yard, including the garden, is burgeoning with life. Of course it is a more “jungly” year in general because of the cool wet spring, but this feels bigger than that. 

There are definitely more bees, dragonflies. damselflies and butterflies already than in the past. Birds linger in the grass and in the trees. Rabbits are frequent visitors—I love that they nibble the lawn rather than the garden plants (so I’m not mad at them any more). On hot days they rest and cool themselves in the shaded grass. I feel like I’m living in a Disney movie when I see them nestled in the lawn, only their head and twitching ears visible above the greenery. 

Today I noticed that the yard smells different too. There is now a sweet, herbal scent it has never had before. As I am sensitive to smells it is this perhaps as much as anything else that tells me something has radically changed. And I love it.

Yes, it looks very different than a standard lawn, much more like a wild native grassland. But it is soft to walk on and moist, and I’m betting it will fare pretty well when heat and drought hit later in the summer. To avoid upsetting the neighbors Tom does mow the front yard more often so it’s mostly just clover that is visible in the grass. And he has put up a sign informing them that it’s a ”bee lawn” so they know it’s intentional.

What’s a bit embarrassing is this is exactly what I “knew” should happen if we did this, and yet I guess I really didn’t “know” how delightful this would actually feel. A good reminder perhaps as tech companies continue to try to convince us that life on screens is more enlivening than actually getting out and moving around in the world. Bunk.