First off, I would never put red clover into a lawn mix as they are sprawling massive plants which are totally out of place in anything less than a 12-16 inch tall meadow grass setting.

Clover - use standard old white clover or better yet, one of the smaller hop clovers which are quite good lawn plants.

Fescue - For God's sake do not use one of the clumping tall fescues such as KY-31. These can be a total disaster. If you must use fescue, use a fine leaf variety.

Other - Kentucky bluegrass is a traditional mix with clover. It makes a very nice lawn alone with clovers in fact.

A good clover-bluegrass lawn requires no fertilizer for maintaining, but in our area of acid soils, it does need occasional lime additions. As the lawn ages, the clover will build up a store of nitrogen, and start to overwhelm the grass. Addition of lime will get the grass going strong, so it begins to outdo the clover, and later, the cycle repeats.

George

Hi, George,

How about Eco-lawn as a fescue? It only grows to 8 inches tall. http://www.eco-lawn.com.

The bluegrass sounds decent, but I'm not sure I like adding lime. I'm really searching for something that requires zero long-term maintenance.

-Scott

Zero long term maintenance? I don't think you can have "lawn" without maintenance. You can have pasture, a wooded lot or a concrete pad.... My concept of "lawn" is a walkable surface, suitable for various activities because it doesn't tangle you up. "Only 8" tall" is deep enough to make it difficult to walk through... forget baseball or picnics.

You shouldn't need to hydroseed unless you have fairly steep slopes, but if you do they can hydroseed with any mixture you want. In fact, hydroseeding can be done without the mulch and binder that most of us think of as "hydroseeding." hyhdroseeding is simply spreading seeds by mixing them with water and spraying them. Hydromulching is when the seeds are mixed with a mulch and a binder to make the mulch stick together. Often fertilizer is added to the mixture, but isn't required in order to hydroseed. Instead of hydroseeding you could instead spread the seed and a mulch by hand. that way you could add or not add what ever you want.

I don't think any lawn is going to be zero maintenance either. Jraynis is correct - you can get a nice pasture that is self-maintaining, but not something that you want growing around a house.

As far as adding lime occassionally, I don't think george meant you need to do it several times a year, I think that is more a "once every several years" type thing. That is about as zero maintenance as you are going to get.

Alexa

Zero-Maintenance to me is cutting the grass once a month or less, due to the slow growing nature of the grasses in the lawn.

The borough where I live doesn't allow an 8" high grass anyway, so it's a moot point.

Anyway, I'm looking for some lawn grasses for the main part of our lawn, that is slow growing and will hold up well to foot traffic. I want to use a combination of grasses to avoid a monoculture lawn like 99.9% of the lawns in our area.

Hi Scott,

You might want to ask this question on the native plants forum. I know they've had a few discussions on non-traditional lawn alternatives.

Good luck,
Bellatrix