clover

The effort to restore the historic outdoor spaces at Oak Hill Cottage to the 1870s period includes restoring lawn areas. Prior to the 1950s grass seed mixtures included white clover seed, but the use of broadleaf weedkillers became the norm and precluded the usefullness of the beneficial little plant. At Oak Hill we have discontinued the use of lawn weedkillers and chemical fertilizer in an effort to encourage the mixture of grass and clover that made up historic turf.
If you want to see a more mature example of this kind of lawn, check out Kingwood Center where this has been practised for a number of years already.
In an effort to speed up the process we have sown Dutch White Clover seed this spring, and it can now be seen emerging in bare spots. We ordered the seed from outdoorpride.com where we found a reasonable price.
Besides providing a more natural looking turf, the reversal of our last 60 years of chemical lawn care would be a win win situation for the honeybee which continues to face worldwide decline for unknown reasons. Chemicals in the environment has been implicated in the problem, and it can't hurt to provide the bees with some untainted clover also.