Alternative Lawn Solutions For Small Patches of Ground
Lawns just aren’t what they used to be. With more and more units popping up and land getting smaller, lots of people are ending up with a tiny little piece of green.
That patch of green is so small that it’s really not worth having grass there that you have to mow and muck around with. It can actually be quite tricky figuring out to make this space pretty.
Now there are people who think the solution to this is putting down plastic grass, which we… strongly disagree with. Honestly, we hate the stuff. It’s ugly, it’s expensive, it’s hard to lay down, and it makes any garden look ten times worse.
So we’re going to steer you away from plastic grass to much better, prettier, and cheaper options. Let’s get right into it.
Here is a list of the plants we will be talking about today.
Dichondra repens
Dichondra ‘Silver Falls’
Ophiopogon ‘Dwarf’ Mondo Grass
Pratia ‘White Star Creeper’ and ‘Blue Star Creeper’
Thymus ‘White Creeping Thyme’
Dymondia ‘Silver Carpet’
Myoporum ‘Yareena™’
Soleirolia ‘Baby’s Tears’
Sagina ‘Green Irish Moss’
Scleranthus biflorus ‘Lime Lava’
Mint ‘Corsican’
Zoysia ‘No Mow Grass’
Dichondra repens
This is a very popular groundcover and is perfect if you have a shady spot. You might have a big tree that casts shade over the whole area, or it’s on the south side of the house.
Lawn typically doesn’t grow great in these spots. But Dichondra repens is going to absolutely thrive.
Dichondra repens will also grow in full sun, so if you have a mixed spot with sun and shade in different patches, then this is a great option.
It’s great around pavers, most people like to choose Mondo, but Dichondra repens is faster, easier and cheaper. Also, it looks a lot better.
It has a kidney shaped leaf and looks very green and lush with minimal effort. It also will take low foot traffic.
It needs a reasonable amount of water and fertiliser, and reasonable soil. If you plant it now as we go into the warmer months, it will cover the ground really quickly
Dichondra ‘Silver Falls’
This is Dichondra repens’ silver-green coloured cousin. Now Silver Falls can grow in the hottest sun, or the deepest shade.
It will give you that pop of bright silver that contrasts beautifully with the rest of the greenery in your garden.
It’s great for covering any area, particularly an embankment where it can cascade over. It can cascade for more than a metre, so is really perfect for those situations where you want a lawn besides a retaining wall.
We’ve often used it in our garden designs at the base of a large pot and also love to use it around paving.
Ophiopogon ‘Dwarf’ Mondo Grass
This is very, very popular. We do want to note that Dwarf Mondo Grass doesn’t seem to blanket out the weeds all that great though. We’ve seen many plantings of it where it has quite a lot of weeds coming through it, so just be mindful of that.
Dwarf Mondo is also only good in the shade, if you put it in a place with hot sun it will get sunburn. So the whole area you’re planting it in needs to be shady, and you have to stay on top of the weeds.
But don’t let that dissuade you from buying it, Dwarf Mondo is very beautiful. It’s lush, low and a gorgeous shade of dark green. It will take a bit of foot traffic, but nothing crazy.
Pratia ‘White Star Creeper’ and ‘Blue Star Creeper’
If you love flowers, then you’ll love the White Star Creeper and Blue Star Creeper – it has the most beautiful starlike flower which you can get in a striking white or a soft blue.
Best of all, you’ll get these stunning flowers for eight months of the years, which is a very long flowering period.
It’s a low groundcover that is great to put around paving or make a whole lawn of.
It loves the hot sun but can do well in partial shade. However, absolutely don’t plant it in deep shade. It needs fairly good soil, a regular feed, and a good amount of water, especially in the heat of summer.
But it is a very pretty and reliable groundcover that’s going to make that small patch of land shine.
Thymus ‘White Creeping Thyme’
Creeping Thyme is a spectacular option, with our favourite being the white one. It is a beautiful moss like green mat and flowers from mid spring through to late summer. So another groundcover with a long flowering period.
The flowers also give off a gorgeous fragrance when you brush over the top of it. It will take some light foot traffic, but again, don’t go stomping all over it.
It will grow well in hot sun through to partial sun, but just make sure you aren’t planting it in a completely shady spot.
It’s easy to grow, and spreads quite quickly, particularly in the warm weather. It needs good soil and fertiliser.
You also have a couple variations, of course the white one we love the most, but also crimson, pink and purple. We’d say the Purple Creeping Thyme is the second best, and the Crimson Creeping Thymeis the third best.
Some of the other variations are a bit more shaggy and not quite as smooth and flat as the ones we just pointed out.
Dymondia ‘Silver Carpet’
Silver Carpet is closely related to the Marguerite Daisy, but it hardly ever flowers, you may get the odd yellow flower on it every now and again.
It’s a beautiful silver-grey that would pair very nicely with dark paving, like a dark blue stone.
It takes light foot traffic – maybe the occasional dog running over it or person walking on it. Silver Carpet is very tough and has a neat appearance.
It loves the hot sun but will take partial shade.
Myoporum ‘Yareena™’
This is a good Australian native that has a broad dark green leaf and grows fairly flat on the ground. All through the summer you get lovely starry white flowers that have an amazing honey fragrance.
It can take quite a bit of foot traffic, you can jump on it, lay on it, do whatever you like, it’s very tough stuff. It is a bit fatter than some of the other options on this list.
Once established it will end up about 20 or 30cm tall. Yareena is incredibly low maintenance, occasionally you’ll have to cut around the edges but that’s about it. It also blankets out the weeds really well.
One of the best patches we’ve seen of it was Shepparton on the side of the road where it never gets watered and it’s a really hot dry climate with hard clay soil. Yet, it remained lush and green all year.
So if you want something really tough and low maintenance that is going to cover a large area, Yareena is the one to go for.
Soleirolia ‘Baby’s Tears’
If you have a spot that is in really deep shade, Baby’s Tears will absolutely thrive there. You get in a green or yellow shade, and it is a beautiful delicate looking plant.
The best time to plant it is now at the end of August/start of September and it will spread like crazy in the warm weather. Keep it well watered and fertilised, and out of the hot sun.
You can put it around pavers, along garden walls and in between cracks. It would do great in a fernery or undercover courtyard.
Sagina ‘Green Irish Moss’
We know we’ve said this a few times, but we are providing a list of the best options, so here is another popular one.
Irish Moss has starry white flowers in springtime and looks just like moss, but it’s much hardier than moss.
It’ll grow in full sun through to partial shade, such as planting it under a tree where it gets speckled sun.
It’s low, lush and smooth with a luminous limey-gold colouring. It looks very attractive in the garden.
It needs good soil, and a fair amount of water and fertiliser.
Scleranthus biflorus ‘Lime Lava’
This has an incredible texture, that grows into a mound with a very smooth finish. It is this special quality and softness about it that makes a lot of people pat it when they walk past it in the nursery (we see this happen every day).
What’s interesting about Lime Lava is that it’s actually an Australian Native – even though it looks like something that would have originated in Scotland. In truth it grows naturally in the cracks of the rocks above the snow line on top of Australia’s mountains.
In winter it will be buried in the snow, then once the weather warms up and it thaws out, it needs the full sun. You really don’t want to be planting it in the shade because it will get all shaggy and weird.
Instead, it needs full sun, well drained soil and plenty of water and fertiliser. When we use it in our Garden Designs, we pick out the sunniest spot in the whole garden and then plant two or three of them together. They look really great as a clump, and we also like to blend them with a little bit of Black Mondo for some contrast.
They are not suitable for foot traffic, so don’t grow them in a spot where a lot of people, or animals, will be walking over it. In this situation you would be better off with a Creeping Thyme.
Mint ‘Corsican’
This is a really interesting one that you don’t see round that much. It’s pretty much Baby’s Tears for the sun – so if you loved the look of Baby’s Tears but your spot isn’t in the shade, then Mint Corsican is the choice for you.
Now Mint Corsican does flower, unlike Baby’s Tears. It has a gorgeous mauve flower and a fine mossy look. It’s great for growing over rocks and right in the cracks of pavers.
It also has a delicious minty fragrance when you brush your fingertips over it or squish it.
Zoysia ‘No Mow Grass’
Also known as Temple Grass, Zoysia is a fine and dense grass that grows in hilly tuft mounds. It will take light foot traffic and grows best in warm weather.
It will grow fine almost anywhere in Victoria and even though it’s a little tropical it can take quite a bit of frost. It needs plenty of fertiliser and water.
When you first plant this, it’s important to keep really on top of the weeds until it has had enough of a chance to form a thick mat. Once it’s established, you’ll find that it will blanket out the weeds.
Then you just need to make sure you keep it well watered and fertilised, and you will have this gorgeous soft green mat that you never have to mow.
It’s not your conventional flat lawn and the reason why you don’t have to mow it is because the blades of grass have no real length to them.
Choose The Right Option For You
So there you have it, an excellent round up of lawn alternatives for that tricky small space in your garden. We hope this has shown you how easy and cheap it is to create a beautiful lawn – and to steer FAR away from artificial grass.
If you’re struggling to make your mind up, here are some questions you should ask yourself:
- Do you want flowers?
- Do you want shade loving or sun loving?
- Do you want a mossy-like look or more of a grass-like look?
Now is the time to be thinking about it because all of these options grow and spread much better in the warm weather. Which means the time it takes to get coverage from your plant is much shorter. And we are very happy to say this, but the weather is getting better, and we are drawing closer to summer.
If you’re someone who wants more interactive content, come join our lives! We typically do two a week, a Live Q&A 12PM on Monday and an educational lecture 12PM on Tuesday (like this one on lawn alternatives!). Now these aren’t set in stone times, so please be sure to check our socials for updated information.
Spread the word and help us make gardening accessible for everyone.
Feeling inspired to create your own garden, but want some expert advice? Try our one-on-one garden design service with Chris. Together you’ll come up with a selection of plants along with a layout plan that gives you the look you want, as well as being suitable for your local soil and conditions.
A lot of people come to us wanting help for their garden as they are going to put their property on the market. These are the smart people that know a garden can greatly affect the value of a property.
The first step you’re going to take is subtraction. This is where you want to bring in some outside opinions like your mum, brother, friend, whatever.
Mow the lawn, rake out a bit of potty mix and then seed the lawn with annual ryegrass. Problem fixed. Also if you have young tender grass, mow it up high and often.
When we decide what plants are low maintenance, we look for things like are they self-shaping, do they attract bugs, are they disease resistant, do they require a lot of water and so on.
Senkaki Maple
The final touch would be some 
You may think you’re getting a cute little Conifer and next moment it has taken over your yard and kidnapped your kids for ransom. Okay maybe not that last part. But there are so many cases where people have a monstrous Conifer towering over their suburban home, or farmers have puny dying Conifers in the yard. When you don’t have the gardening knowledge, it can be really hard knowing what Conifer is right for you.
Especially when there are SO many different types of Conifers that all grow to different sizes and shapes. At Hello Hello we have around 
So there’s a taste of some of the incredible types of Conifers, now it isn’t the full range we sell in the nursery, or even what is available in general. But we wanted to keep it to the best types for different applications.
You have to wait until summer for the new shoots, pick a few grams and dry it in the microwave or oven. Then chuck on the kettle and make yourself a cuppa. This is going to be like no tea you’ve ever had before, that old stuff at the grocery store can’t measure up to freshly plucked and brewed tea.
As we mentioned before, a lot of gardens have those spots where the sun never quite reaches, and it can be tricky to find a plant that will work there. But you’re also not limited to the shade, if you have a big kitchen window or an ugly fence you want to cover and it’s in full sun, this is no problem for the Camellia sasanqua. Just make sure you’re watering it more if it is in a sunny spot.
Okay so you’ve decided what type and where you’re going to use it, now you need to know how to take care of it.
In general, your Camellia needs regular feeding – water it and give it Osmocote, and Camellias will absolutely flourish. The best time to prune is immediately after the flowering is finished. The reason for this is that pruning them halfway through the season inhibits next year’s growths.
Camellias are a stunning plant with so many applications, from a thick hedge to a pot plant, you have so much freedom with where you want to put it in your garden.
In this article we will cover:
come with its roots enveloped in an earthen ball, wrapped in Hessian and secured with a wire mesh basket to hold it all together. Lean it up against a wall and make sure to keep the root ball moist. Dig a hole that is an extra 50cm wide than the root ball. Combine potting mix through the parent soil. You want the root ball high in the hole and surrounded by loose permeable soil.
Firstly, in the winter he would mix up the seeds with moist 
Twice a day he watered the bed. Once they had germinated and were half an inch high, he would lift the hessian and timber frame to about 50cm off the bed. This allowed for airflow and reduced humidity. Dad also decreased the amount of watering at this point.
By the next winter these Birches were about 80cm tall. Now around this time that my dad was perfecting the growing process of Silver Birch Trees, we had a Finish family move in next door to our growing field. It was a husband and wife with ten children! Now the Toorkolas LOVED the Birch trees. They actually took scraps from the Birch Trees and created all sort of things with it such as brooms. They even said that if they were back in Finland, they would’ve made shoes out of the Birches! It was pretty incredible to hear about the other uses of the Silver Birch. Especially because during this era, Silver Birches were one of the most popular ornamental trees in Melbourne. Even now they’re still popular because they grow very vigorously and are a very pretty tree that don’t grow too big.
In his research he stumbled upon our website and was shocked when he discovered that we were growing Silver Birches here. As he details in his email to us “present foresters consider Silver Birch to be strictly adapted to local conditions” and “can be transferred only 200km N or S.” Australia is much further than that. So scientifically you shouldn’t be able to grow a Betula Silver Birch at this latitude. However, Rousi is trying to argue to the contrary, where Betula pendula “is very plastic” and can adapt to other conditions.
This Silver Birch Forest is living proof of that. So not only has this Silver Birch grown without any maintenance, but it also defies what many Finnish foresters believe. If you want to hear more about this, I highly recommend reading Matt Rousi’s book once it has been published.
Okay that was a lot of information. So let’s go over the basics again. Olive Trees are incredible. Olive Trees can be used as a hedge, feature tree, windbreak, or screen. They’re low maintenance and tough as rocks. They give you delicious fruit that can be used in many different ways. They’re more reliable than a Toyota Corolla. And right now we’ve got an excellent sale going on.
So my dad was also in the horticulture field, and he brought all us kids into it. My siblings and I would go up to Lancefield and harvest the cones off of Indian Cedars. Then we would bring them back and warm them in this big boiler so that they would fall apart, and we could get the seeds inside. My dad would plant the seeds in a little pot and after about three years we’d get a little Indian Cedar. Incredible, isn’t it? That wasn’t the only Cedar we harvested, in Mount Dandenong there is a Blue Cedar that we would cut the shoots off of and then my dad would graft them. He would seal them up with a bit of plastic and tar and then grow them.
As always, we have a little Q&A Section where we answer some of the questions that popped up. If you have any questions of your own come to our Facebook Live, it happens every week on Wednesday, and we cover a different topic every time. Here this week’s question: