Hi Suzanne, have you seen DirtinNails' post in the gallery? It's absolutely stunning. Also, another idea other than using mondo grass is to use two or three colors of moss and lay the pattern out just as you like it. It could be fabulous.

The north side of my yard is shady so i decided to go with a woodland effect in the beds. I had once had a beautiful lawn, but I keep digging it up for more plant space. In the center, moss has kinda took over the lawn and I let the lawn go, since I wanted a woodland effect, I decided I want the moss to fill in. So far I have found moss to be an excellent alternaive to grass in that it is easy to rake leaves on, you don't have to cut it or water it and it stays green year round. It is also nice to walk on.

What if your lawn has converted to moss on its own? We have two huge maples and they don't let enough light through for anything except moss, ground ivy, and violets (which I consider very pretty, but this is a lawn failure if I was expecting grass).

Is there a way to tell if this is healthy? Or something to do to make it or keep it healthier?

I read on a website to spray your lawn with wettable sulfer to lower the pH. It makes the soil less hospitable to grass and more homey for moss. Unfortunately, now that I've bought sulfer, I don't know how much to apply. Does anyone know the answer?

I believe your moss is moving in because the grass is not happy there. Either change the environment to provide more sunlight or let the moss really take over. Regular garden sulfur will encourage the moss. The easiest stuff to use is the dry, pelletized form. All sulfur does is to acidify the soil -- it provides no nutrients. The amount used is not really too critical -- I just broadcast the stuff by hand around my moss garden once a year, at a rate of maybe a half pound per hundred square feet. Never fertilize moss -- you will be benefiting the weeds, but not the moss. Regular, but light waterings are essential in dry weather. But moss does not do well in soggy, boggy soil. In fact, my polytrichum loves the very sandy loom in my garden. For a few years, you will have a bit of weeding to do by hand. Try to keep grass clippings out of the moss -- the weed seed content is high. Broadleaf weedkiller gets rid of weeds nicely and the moss completely ignores it, though in your location, maybe you don't want to use it. The biggest problem, for me anyway, comes in the fall, when the huge leaf mass from a large Norway maple covers everything. Just before they start to come down, I have to put down a plastic mesh, wait for the leaves to fall, then roll up the mesh. This is the not so much fun part. But the rest of the year, moss is a rather low maintenance, durable cover. And, as Dragonfly_Dance suggests, walking barefoot in slightly wet moss is downright sensual, and probably illegal in some states.

Good luck.

Well hello all. I have just become a member and have read through this forum with much interest. I have just bought a house with a shady back yard and the very back yard is bush. I have started to create a rock path from the bush to where the steps will come down from my deck. I want the gaps between these rocks to be green with moss. How do I go about this? At the moment the gaps are left open with varying depth's of openess depending on the thicknes of the rock used at that spot. I have seen pictures of rock paths with solid green between the rocks and I guess that has been moss. Would that be a correct assumption? Thanks, Colin.

That picture is absolutely gorgeous!!!

My front yard is slowly converting to moss and I love it. I really haven't done much to encourage it, but I should. Just to hasten the progress. I love it. It's green. It doesn't require mowing. It does get kind of brown when it gets dry.