Red Creeping Thyme: The Beautiful Pink Lawn You Never Have to Mow, Water or Weed

This zero-maintenance lawn also repels mosquitoes and feeds the bees!

Lawns are becoming less and less popular these days. Besides being high-maintenance, they are terrible for the environment.

The mono-crop grasses require lots of watering, fertilizing and “herbiciding.” With mounting water shortages around the world, should we really be dumping clean water on non-edible grass?

Grass also requires gasoline for the lawnmower and your labor.

And, of course, along with mono-crop farm fields, conventional lawns are starving out pollinators, who used to rely on natural prairie grasses, flowers and forests.

Naturally, people are looking for alternatives. Some are planting edible gardens, some are planting prairie grasses and flowers for pollinators, and some are planting eco-friendly clover lawns, for a look and feel more similar to a regular lawn.

And now we’ve found another alternative – creeping red thyme. Like clover, the fast-growing cover crop can take over your whole lawn like a carpet.

It stays low-to-the-ground, never growing more than 3 or 4 inches tall. It’s soft like clover, and hardy enough to walk on and lay on without dying.

While the creeping variety is not edible like regular thyme, its pleasant lemony scent attracts humans and pollinators, while repelling mosquitoes.

It’s ultra-drought tolerant, and shouldn’t need to be watered except in the beginning, unless you’re in an extremely dry climate.

Because it’s roots go deeper into the soil, it also shouldn’t need to be fertilized, which is good news for the rivers, lakes and oceans polluted by fertilizer runoff.

And, the no-maintenance cover crop creates a thick mat wherever it’s planted, so you won’t have to do any weeding or apply any herbicide.

Bonus – the long-lasting perennial flowers will paint your lawn a beautiful shade of pinkish lavender for a good chunk of the year.

You can plant it in segments if you want variety.