Planting a Bee Lawn: 5 Top Reasons to Grow a Flowering Lawn

Last Updated on March 28, 2024

Wondering what you can do to make your yard a haven for endangered pollinators? Consider adding some flowering plants to your lawn, which can be easily amended to make it pollinator-friendly. Creating a flowering lawn or bee lawn is easy to do and can make a huge difference for these important and imperiled species.

This is a guest post by Anthony Nied of Flawn Seed Kits. I attended a talk Anthony gave about eco-friendly gardening practices at a recent garden show and loved what he was doing, so I asked him to contribute a post. Learn more about flowering lawns — what he calls ‘flawns’ — and consider adding some of these beneficial flowers to your own lawn.

WHAT IS A FLOWERING LAWN OR BEE LAWN?

A flowering lawn or ‘Flawn’ is a grass lawn that includes low-growing wildflowers. While traditional lawns are monocultures that don’t provide food for pollinators, these mixes of grass and wildflowers add diversity and offer food sources for numerous species of pollinating insects.

Flawn Seed Kits include clover, creeping thyme, and self-heal, which will grow in with your grass lawn over time in a ratio of about half grass and half wildflowers.

When you add low-growing wildflowers and clovers to your existing grass lawn, you create a “Flawn” or Flowering Lawn. It still functions like a lawn, but it takes a lot less work to maintain, and it’s far better for the environment.

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF A FLOWERING BEE LAWN?

While grass grown by itself is expensive, difficult, and potentially dangerous to maintain, requiring frequent mowing, watering, and chemical fertilizers and pesticides to keep it looking good, a flowering lawn is much more sustainable and easy to care for.

A lawn growing nothing but grass is an ecological dead space, doing little to support wildlife. If you convert your share of the millions of acres of environmentally detrimental grass lawns in America into a flowering lawn, both you and the planet will be better off.

Some of the top benefits of growing a flowering bee lawn:

1. FOOD SOURCE FOR BENEFICIAL POLLINATORS

The flowers included in the Flawn Seed Kits Bee Lawn Seed Mix bloom white, pink, and purple flowers from May to October in most of the U.S., providing vital nectar sources for a wide range of beneficial pollinators. Dutch White Clover blooms with white flowers about 2-6” tall in late spring through early fall and provides nectar for many different bees and butterflies.

The broadleaf plants mixed in with the grass also make a much better habitat for pollinators than grass lawns by themselves.

Your flowering bee lawn will attract and support pollinators that are suffering huge declines from things like habitat loss and pesticide use.

Also included in the Flawn Seed Kits Bee Lawn Seed Mix is Creeping Thyme and Self-Heal which are native to North America and are excellent sources of nectar for pollinators throughout the summer. By adding diversity to your grass-only lawn you can support beneficial pollinators while reducing your maintenance needs which will save you money and time.

2. LESS MOWING

Once established, a flowering lawn will require much less mowing than a traditional grass only lawn. Instead of receiving a massive amount of nitrogen from a bag of chemical fertilizer, resulting in huge growth spurts which require frequent mowing, the grass will be naturally supported by the clovers and growth will be slowed to a much more manageable pace.

Ultimately, you get to decide how often to mow your Flawn and at what height. 

Mowing will also be reduced by about 75% as you only need to mow when the grass gets tall enough that it begins to flop over and cover the flowers.

Less time mowing and more enjoying your summer? Yes, please!

Here’s more about why mowing less is a good idea.

3. LESS WATERING

Flowering lawns have a mix of broadleaf plants in amongst the narrow blades of the grass. This creates a miniature rain forest effect with a canopy that shades the ground, keeping it cool and preventing the soil from drying out as fast as a grass only lawn would. You only need to water a mature Flawn in the event of an extended drought.

4. NO MORE CHEMICALS

When you incorporate white clover into your grass lawn you are essentially replacing the need for any additional fertilizer. Clover has a symbiotic relationship with a bacterium that transfers nitrogen out of the atmosphere and into the soil through its roots.

Once the clover is mature it will support your grass and help prevent weeds from encroaching as well. The broad leaves of the clovers and other low-growing wildflowers shade the ground and prevent weed seeds from finding their way to the soil and receiving sunlight which they need to grow. Many taproot weeds like dandelions will be choked out over time and annual weeds like crabgrass that grow from seed will be prevented.

5. SAVE TIME AND MONEY

Once you add up all the fertilizer, pesticides, gas, and water required, keeping a grass lawn can be very expensive. Don’t forget how much time you spend mowing, weeding, and doing other general maintenance. Now you can show off your Flawn by adding self-sustaining low growing wildflowers, cancel the chemical lawn service, and put the savings towards your next vacation.

The white clovers in Flawn Seed Kits Bee Lawn Seed Mix will provide grass with the nitrogen it needs while also helping to shade the ground and prevent it from drying out. That means less watering from you, saving you time as well as money on your water bill.

Learn more about how grass alternatives benefit the environment, and additional ways to make your landscaping eco-friendly.

There are numerous options for your flowering bee lawn. Check out the many Flawn seed kits to choose from, as well as lots of other great products for your eco-friendly yard.

Flawn Seed Kits even have a reusable shipping pouch option to let you make your eco-savvy purchase even more sustainable!

HOW TO GROW A FLOWERING BEE LAWN

Converting your grass lawn to a flowering lawn is simple. You don’t even need to remove your existing grass.

To create a flowering bee lawn, all you do is mow your lawn as short as possible — about half an inch high — and then lightly rake to loosen the soil.

Then you’re ready to spread your Flawn Seed Kit, and then lightly water 2-3 times per day for the next 2-3 weeks. The seeds will germinate and grow amongst your existing grass and begin to bloom in the next few months. Since they’re perennials, they’ll continue to bloom and feed pollinators for years to come.

If you’re starting from scratch with bare soil all you need to do is add 2 to 4 lbs of a low input grass seed blend like Flawn Seed Kits Low Mow Mix.

It’s very important to continue to mow the grass at a normal height of about 2.5-3” for the first year after seeding so that the grass does not get too tall and thick and crowd out any of the new flower seedlings.

Here’s a video showing what a new flowering lawn looks like after 3 weeks.

Once established, there will be a mix of about 50% grass and 50% low growing wildflowers. Your kids and pets can still use the lawn as usual for sports and games as the flowers tolerate foot and pet traffic better than grass by itself.

After the first full growing season you can decide what height to keep your Flawn. If you mow shorter you can expect there to be fewer and smaller flowers, and it will look more like a traditional manicured lawn.

If you want larger flowers and more of them, simply hold off on mowing until the grass is starting to flop over on the flowers and then only mow to your highest setting on your lawn mower.

SHOULD YOU CONSIDER A FLOWERING BEE LAWN?

The answer is yes if you are tired of maintaining your existing grass lawn and are looking for a safe, environmentally-friendly, low-maintenance alternative to grass.

If you have had difficulty getting grass to grow well in low light, poor soil, or wet or dry areas, then seeding a Flawn is a great option. The little work it takes to get a Flawn established will pay off for many years to come by saving you time and money while benefiting the environment and our precious pollinators.

The varieties included in the Flawn Seed Kits Bee Lawn Seed Mix grow well in full sun to shade and in most different soil types across the U.S. and Canada.

Looking for other great ways to make your yard more eco-friendly? Check out some of these popular posts:

• Herbal groundcovers
• Drought tolerant groundcovers
• Small space gardening

Save this info on planting a flowering bee lawn for later!

About the author: Anthony Nied created Flawn Seed Kits after years of offering organic lawn care services and performing flowering lawn renovations. Flawn Seed Kits is a family-owned and operated business in western Wisconsin on a mission to improve the quality of life and the environment by creating easy-to-use seed kits that benefit the customer and the surrounding environment. Flawn Seed Kits is a registered brand of Flowering Lawn Inc.

Photos by Anthony Nied