How to Remove Clover from My Lawn

Here in Detroit, Michigan, we get asked regularly, “Can you get all this clover out of my lawn?” Our answer is pretty simple: “We could, but we don’t want to.”

Clover is amazing for your lawn and our community!

1) Clover is an excellent source of nutrition for the bees and butterflies. Bees are a cornerstone of our food system, so keeping them happy and fed is really important!

2) Clover promotes healthy soil, improving the health of your entire lawn. Clover has long been used as a cover crop by farmers for nitrogen fixing, the process that converts nitrogen from the air into chemicals other living organisms can use, such as ammonia. This is crucial because nitrogen is a key component of many biological molecules, but most organisms can't use the nitrogen gas directly from the atmosphere.

3) Clover helps aerate your lawn. The taproots keep soil from compacting too much, allowing air, water, and nutrients to reach deep into the ground.

4) Clover suppreses actual weeds. You don’t need to use harmful herbicides to kill weeds when clover is doing the work of keeping weeds from getting established in your lawn!

5) Clover is incredibly drought and heat tolerant. While my neighbors’ lawns are brown and patchy during the hottest and driest months of the year, my lawn is lush and deep green, soft and cool to walk on, and requires no watering from me.

6) Clover is perfect for your dog’s potty area. Clover has a natural tolerance to the acidity and nitrogen content in dog urine. It is more resistant to those browning or yellowing patches you’ll see in most grass lawns.

Clover, especially when mixed with other groundcover and grass, is extremely beneficial for your lawns and for the environment. It achieves all the desired outcomes you have for a lush, green lawn, with less maintenance and zero need for harmful chemicals.

So, if you need help with your clover this summer, we’d be happy to be mowing it, but we urge you to keep on growing it!